Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age or any of its related characters. This is just for my own enjoyment and the potential enjoyment of other fans like me, and no monetary gain was expected or received.
Rating: T
Spoilers: May contain spoilers for Origins, Awakening, and Dragon Age II as well as the novels The Stolen Throne and The Calling.
Chapter Thirty-Five: Drink Your Glasses Empty
"I think Bianca's gotten scratched."
Thus were Varric's glum words as at long last they exited the eternal twilight of the deep Brecilian Forest for the bright sunlight at the base of the city.
"Put that away before we reach the gates, or the guards will shoot you," Loghain said, not entirely truthfully.
Varric gave the crossbow's shiny mahogany stock a final pat and a fond kiss and returned Bianca to her harness on his back. "Somewhere in this town there's some fine-grit sandpaper with your name on it, Bee, but matching your stain might be tough."
"Would have been easier in Gwaren," Loghain said, "but someone in the industrial district should be able to set you up."
"If I find the right stuff I'll lay in a stock. Somehow I suspect that if I continue to hang out with you, I'll need a steady supply. Four days fighting werewolves in the dark forest would strip the varnish off of anyone."
"You should think about equipping yourself with a decent blade, even just a hunting knife - something you can grab quickly and fight with one-handed. Bianca is a fine weapon, but she's entirely too good to waste on close combat."
"You are a wise man, Big Bull," Varric said. "Hawke did that very thing herself, and her bows were never as splendid and fierce as my Bianca. Maybe I'll hit the marketplace and look for a decent dagger."
"I am…glad to be back," Seanna said, timidly but with a tremor of fervency in her voice. Being back meant being at risk from the local templars, but it also meant no more sleeping rough, no giant spiders, and no werewolves.
"Look there - what the bloody hell do you think that is?" Elilia asked. She pointed at the horizon beyond the city wall, where the back of her own head, done in gleaming white stone a thousand feet high, could be glimpsed among the buildings strewn over the mountainside.
Loghain grunted. "I reckon we'll see once we're in the city proper."
"Must we go straight to the palace, or may we enjoy a cool drink and a moment's peace before we start dealing with…being back?" Elilia asked.
It was on Loghain's lips to say that they had to go to the palace, of course they did, business must always be taken care of first and duty was paramount, but another thought stayed him. Even though he looked forward to seeing his daughter and her children again (and yes, even to seeing his son-in-law, a little) he did not at all relish the sort of duties the King and Queen would foist upon him, first and foremost among them the business of the upcoming holiday and the Landsmeet that would take place shortly thereafter. Frankly, the issue of succession in Gwaren didn't interest him much nor did he feel it was of any great importance compared to the larger issues of national defense.
"Let's go for that drink," he said. "Anywhere but the Gnawed Noble, I can't stand that pretentious scummy hole, or the people that drink there."
"Ah, the Gnawed Noble," Varric said fondly. "Just when I thought the Hanged Man had a rotten name. There's a decent pub down by the docks - a bit of a dive, true, but the ale is good and the place doesn't smell all that bad."
"The Fishwife's Cloister?" Loghain asked.
"You know the place."
"Only place in town where a man can get a drink without being hounded by petitioners or thugs."
"Ha! So you've had dealings with the Dwarven Merchants' Guild, too?" Varric said, laughing.
"Worse. Ferelden nobility."
The guardsman in the box before the gates saluted smartly as they approached. "Lord Loghain, Ser - I shall send to the palace word of your return."
"If you might be so kind as to delay that word even just a few moments, that would be much appreciated," Loghain said. "My companions and I would like a moment to catch our breath before we have to dive back into the river."
The guard grinned. "Understood, Ser. The young lads are damned unreliable, always stopping to chat with their mates or getting lost in the markets."
"Good man."
Once through the great gates they turned east towards the seafront, wending down the streets through the well-built and organized buildings that had replaced the ramshackle sprawl destroyed by the Archdemon's armies. Not every part of Denerim was New and Improved, but so much had been lost that had to be rebuilt. Elilia had funded much of it, boldly hording the Archdemon Urthemiel's corrupted blood to herself and forcing the Warden Order to pony up gold in order to replenish supplies made scarce by the intervening centuries, calling it "duties of the defenders of Thedas for the reconstruction of Blight-ridden Ferelden." It had only been the first time she'd deliberately acted to piss off the First Warden, though it was probably her finest hour as a renegade of the Order - and it had been prompted solely by the conspicuous lack of assistance the Order provided to the defenders of the Fifth Blight. The bulk of that blood still resided in casks beneath the Denerim Warden's Compound, but she'd brought in an absolute fortune for the barrels she'd sold. Needless to say, Loghain approved wholeheartedly. Admission to the Order hadn't made him any less suspicious of it or its agenda. Four hundred years was a long time to simply "remain vigilant," and the First Warden seemed more adept than he or Elilia at breaking the "non-interference" rule.
Suddenly he stopped short, causing Laz to walk directly into his back. "Maker's breath…"
The corner he'd just rounded revealed the grand sentinel statues in all their glory, although both faces - and both identities - were concealed by their orientation. "I've never seen anything like that before," Elilia said, awestruck. "Even the magisters never made statues like that."
"There's supposed to be something like this at the Merdaine, in the Anderfels," Varric said. "A tremendous statue of Andraste carved right out of the mountain's face. But this…this is…a whole different degree of 'holy shit.'"
"By all that is good and holy, it's Loghain and Elilia!" Seanna said, equal parts horrified and amused.
"I'm sure you're mistaken," Loghain said, with the uncomfortable sensation that she was not.
"Trust me, I've spent a goodly amount of time recently staring at your backs, and I speak now as an expert."
"What in the Maker's holy name would possess Alistair and Anora to erect gigantic statues of us in Denerim harbor?" Elilia said.
"It was the dwarves," Loghain said, through clenched teeth.
"Hey, you can't pin this on us!" Varric said, raising his hands defensively.
"Not you, the dwarves of Orzammar. Their King…Boolan, or whatever the hell his name is."
"Bhelen," Elilia supplied.
"Man can remember the name of a short-time grunt soldier who died a decade ago but not the name of a foreign Head of State," Varric muttered.
Loghain turned on Elilia accusingly. "You told the bastard you wanted your head on a bloody Paragon statue."
"Hey, I never thought he'd take me seriously," she said. "And I certainly never told him to stick a big statue of you up somewhere."
"Let's get to the damned bar," Loghain said, miserably. "I really need a fucking drink, now."
"Well I knew Anora would have a statue of you up sooner or later, but I thought she'd wait 'til you were dead," Elilia said, with a snigger. "And I always kind of thought she'd put it up by the Orlesian Embassy, so that it can stand glaring down at them for all eternity."
"It should be made to stand where the Orlesian Embassy used to be," Loghain growled. He ushered them into the tavern. "Just get inside and get a drink, I don't want to talk on it further."
He gestured to the bartender for ale and whiskey and chivvied his group towards a dark corner but a loud, beery burst of laughter halted them.
"Haw haw haw! If it ain't the former Warden Commander her own self. Knew I'd find ya if I just kept lookin'." A short, red-headed and red-bearded bull of a man staggered out of a side booth.
"That," Varric said, sounding impressed, "is the drunkest dwarf I've ever seen, up to and including myself. And that's saying a lot."
"Oghren, you didn't look - you sat and drank until I just happened to stumble in," Elilia said, and clapped hands with the disreputable dwarf.
"Haw haw haw! Worked just as well, didn't it?" The dwarf raised an enormous tankard of ale and downed its contents at a gulp, then leered at Laz. "Hey, cutie - like what you see?"
"Not even a little bit," she said, with an offended sniff. "You smell like the ass end of a bronto, steeped in cheap ale."
The dwarf gave out with an obscene giggle. "That's just the smell of marinating in manliness, cutie."
"Ugh," Seanna said.
"I suppose you're going to make us sit with this clod?" Loghain asked. "Oh, very well."
"Hee hee haw haw. Knew you liked me, Loghain."
"Just sit well away from me, Dwarf. Preferably downwind."
"Aw, and here I thought that was your special pet name for me," Varric said. "I feel like a cuckold."
"I'd recommend the House Specialty," Oghren said, a bit uncertainly. "Them cuckolds don't taste any too good after the first one or two."
"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind."
They sat down and Oghren ordered another king-sized mug of ale. "When did you get to the city, Oghren?" Elilia asked. "And why?"
"Come in three days past with the Little Blighter on the RMS Sitz Bath," Oghren said. "Had business with the Little Pike-Twirler."
"Anyone care to translate?" Laz asked.
"'Little Blighter' - Nathaniel Howe, my second-in-command when I was with the Wardens," Elilia explained. "'Little Pike-Twirler' - King Alistair. I couldn't begin to hazard a guess what 'RMS Sitz Bath' refers to."
"That sodding tub that took down the Orlesian fleet, that's what."
"What Orlesian fleet?" Loghain asked, sharply.
Oghren chuckled. "Happened just about a week ago. A dozen galleasses come zipping toward Amaranthine Bay with ballistae pwingin' away like mad…this big metal wreck comes zooming out of nowhere and just lays into 'em, I tell ya. It was sodding beautiful. But hitching a ride on the damned thing was probably the worst thing I've ever had to do since I signed on to this sodding outfit. Worse even than that time I - but, heh heh, you don't want to hear about that."
"What else has happened lately?" Loghain asked. He sipped his whiskey and studied the dwarf shrewdly. "Have there been other attacks?"
"If you want to call 'em that," Oghren said, with a shrug of one shoulder. "'Bout a month or maybe a little better than that ago, a ship snuck into Amaranthine harbor - or tried to. But the Little Blighter was ready for 'em and we caught 'em before they could get out of their little boat. The big ship sailed off but the little one we put paid to, with her passengers. Orlesians. They had funny masks on."
"Orlesians always do," Loghain pointed out.
"These were funnier. Long beaks on 'em, stuffed with purty-smelling things. Flowers and such."
"Plague masks."
Oghren nodded. "That was what the Little Blighter called 'em, all right. And they had a big wooden crate with 'em. There was a sick elf inside."
"Maker's breath."
"That's about the size of it, I guess. Anyway, the Little Blighter sent everybody away but five of us, and we put on the masks and one of our mages, Bannistre, looked the poor kid over. Figured out he had the Bloody Lung. We took the elf to the Chantry, where the Little Blighter and Twinkle-Fingers proceeded to bully the Revered Mother out of enough powdered lyrium to make a batch of medicine for the little shrimp. He's still pretty damned sick, an' he don't speak a bloody word of Common, but he's sure grateful for the help we've given him - an' I think he's sweet on Twinkle-Fingers, too."
"'Twinkle-Fingers' - Velanna, another Warden, and a mage. She's a Dalish," Elilia translated.
Loghain shook his head. "They're trying to use bloody germ warfare against us," he said wonderingly. "Tossing poor sick elves around like bombs. Why don't they just heave rotting pig carcasses into our cities? It would be kinder than this."
"I suppose then you hadn't heard what happened here in Denerim?" Oghren said.
"What happened here in Denerim?" Loghain asked tightly.
Oghren shook his head over his ale sadly. "The Little Blighter feels a bit guilty about that, but it wasn't really his fault. When we caught the Orlesians the city Bann got so damned scared he closed the place down tight, and everybody was in such an ass-bustin' flurry we couldn't find any man to send to here with word, and the Little Blighter had every man at the Keep trying to keep order in town, Wardens and plain soldiers alike. Like as not there wasn't any difference a warning could have made - the sounds of things, they struck here same night."
"They brought another sick elf to Denerim," Loghain said.
"'Fraid so. And there wasn't nobody to stop 'em, here. The Little Pike-Twirler stepped up guard patrols around the docks, but that's one of them cases of shuttin' the barn door after the bronto's been stolen, ain't it? The Alienage is in quarantine. All the elves are dying, so they say."
Loghain slapped the rough wooden table, hard, with both hands, making the glasses jump and rattle. "Son of a - "
He jumped up, and strode angrily toward the door. "Where are you going?" Elilia asked.
"To the Alienage."
"Loghain, you can't go there; it's in quarantine - you were already sick once, isn't that enough?"
"Bugger it."
"Come on, Big Bull - what are you going to do, knock? I don't think they'll let you in," Varric supplied.
"Then I'll climb the fucking wall."
"And what are we supposed to do?" Seanna asked. "Are you asking us to follow you into that malaise?"
"You stay here, dammit - all of you."
"Whatever you're thinking, Loghain, you're wrong," Elilia called out desperately. "There's no need for this."
"Elilia, I can help. What - "
"Don't say it," Varric interrupted. "Do not say it. 'What could possibly go wrong?'"
"No, Dwarf - I never saythat." And he turned and was gone.
"I hope he's got some kind of a plan," Seanna said.
"He always does, Little Bird," Elilia said, but she sounded doubtful herself. What she was thinking was, Anora is not going to be happy about this - and me? I'm a fucking widdow before ever I took my vows!
Oghren swallowed down his ale. "Bartender! Another round!"