The reason that Cerrynt had been dreading the moment of arrival in the city of the empty-lands, or Bree as they called it, turned out not to be what she'd expected.
Adriellyn had warned of brigands on the roads through the empty-lands, and this had seemed ominous; even knowing how capable Adri was, too many would be too many. They had taken time to spar, to prepare. Cerrynt's unusual whirling style had taken Adri by surprise, as it did most people the first time, allowing the Kymru some easy early victories, despite how hampered her technique was by the batting on her axe. But it depended on surprise and momentum; once someone studied it even a bit, vulnerabilities appeared, and Cerrynt was sure Adri could beat her every time, now. When the axe-blade was bare, though, few got a chance to study her methods long enough to exploit their weaknesses. Had she dreaded meeting brigands and having to fight -- to suffer injuries, or die, or worse yet, be proven not as capable in battle as she hoped, the only thing she felt any good at? But there were no brigands; the road was quiet, and the empty-lands remained empty.
Memories of Tros Hynt dogged her; she had never felt welcome there, and those were Kymru, her own people. Despite Adri telling her the emptylanders were of Kymric descent, long ago, they could hardly be more welcoming than those of clans ostensibly allied, bound together by a common land, by intermarriage, by shared custom, by a common language. None of which had helped her amongst the Eryr-lûth; surely in the empty-land city, her dark skin, coarse clothing, broken Westron, and brutish ways would make her even more of an outcast? But while a few stared, it was hardly more than those of the Kymru whose eyes were captured by her misshapen nose, and none seemed threatening. The horse-herder was gracious to her, despite his mixed-forgoil blood (she could sense some Kymric in him as well), and even spoke of another Kymru who worked tending their horses. The people in the market scarcely gave her a second glance. It might yet turn out like Tros Hynt, perhaps, but it didn't seem so. These people had no clan; they were already strangers to one another. She was just a slightly stranger stranger.
Or did she dread hunger, should it turn out that these lands were so unlike her own that she knew not how to forage, hunt, or fish in them? Emptiness was a recent companion, so much that she could still feel the bones below her wrists. Even in Kymry she was a poor hunter, her skill with a bow limited to a few lucky shots against large targets now and then; without a river or a clan she had little hope of staying fed in familiar lands, let alone unfamiliar. But as she got her first glimpse of the large city (so many towers, what did they need to watch for so assiduously?) the lands around seemed achingly like home: rounded hills, flowing water, swaying trees, grasses already beginning to turn green despite the cold. Adri warned her to use bugs, not worms, to fish, and she had no idea how one caught enough bugs for a day's bait; but she'd been able to see fish in the river, only a few minutes away from the town gate, and trees nearby that would make fine poles, and bushes that would grow berries soon. She would be better fed here than in Kymry a month earlier.
She'd certainly dreaded the cold. Her father said her life-long hatred of the cold was probably why she never stopped moving, so she wouldn't cool off. And that was in Kymry. Every step into the empty-lands made it colder, even though every day the sun rose higher. But in the strangely square houses of the emptylanders, they had fires just as back home, and they worked just the same.
No, it was now clear, as she sat in Adri's small square house before a fire, it had been the end of the road itself she had dreaded. Every day's tomorrow had been clear: get one day farther north through the empty-lands. There was Adri, teaching her and learning from her; and there was the next step, the next curve or hill, the next campsite. There was no need to ask what next. But all that would end, and here, in the shadow of Bree-Hill, it had ended. Now she was just a stone in Adri's boot. She had to decide for herself what next. It could not be challenging Trindân and saving her tribe; they were probably already lost, driven from the rivers near the Herd-lands, perhaps a few survivors absorbed into the Caru-lûth or wandering the Dunbog. And if not already, then surely before she could return there, if she ever did. Then what? Merely to find her own squarehouse, get some of the metal-stones they used as debt-tokens here so she could trade, and make every today be about living until tomorrow and nothing else? It didn't seem enough, but what else was there?
