Adriellyn

Tales I heard of Gondor always made it seem like it'd be city after city with roads and people everywhere, to make the Mark and all other places seem like nowhere by comparison. Maybe that's just on account of Mundburg, because that city, what the locals call Minas Tirith, feels that way. Least the bits we got to see. We're not allowed to climb too much into it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Aelfwyn, heavy with her fourth child, met us in the rain just outside the Mead Hall afore we could barely start on the ride to the family's croft, so by time we reached there I knew as they were expecting us. Word had spread through the town.

Adriellyn seems to think she's not speaking Rohirric so well, and she apologized about it after we left our camp in the Westfold, but seems to me she speaks it better than I speak Westron, and it's only been a couple months. Slower, sure, but that's to be expected. I don't doubt that when we get to the croft later this morning to see the family, she's going to be all manner of lost in how many of them is talking and how fast they do it.

There's a place where the land slopes down from the Wold, through a bit of woods, and comes round a steep hillside just afore you come down into the Norcrofts, where all of a moment you see the whole plain as far as the eye can see. There's farms everywhere, as the name would suggest, on account these fields are the best farmland in the whole of the Mark, and the grass here is the most green, more so even than the fields near Beoda's family farm.

The Mark's not my home no more, but I lived here most my life, and I reckon it'll be long years afore it don't make my heart beat all the swifter at the sight of it. Now we're finally here, that keeps going through my thoughts, and it's all manner of confusing and full of guilt. What I found here ain't in the Mark. It's something in my own heart, a lump of selfishness like a stone that weighs me down, one I didn't know were there, and I don't know what to do about it.

When morning came Trevadiel were waiting outside the pavilion. "You are expected," she said to me. "When you have refreshed yourself, Ingarthael will speak to you. I will show you the way."

"Ingarthael?" I said, no doubt mispronouncing the name badly. "Expected?" I wondered if some mistake had been made. Who could be expecting me?

We rode for what felt like just an hour or two, and then we stopped, I figured maybe to rest. Then my blindfold were being taken off. The first thing I noticed was the sun was much lower in the sky; it'd felt like only a few hours but it'd been most the day. Then my jaw dropped.

The climb from the Hollin side up the Redhorn Pass had been a struggle to keep away from the sheer drop to the right; but at the peak, the pass met one of Carrot-thras's brothers and became a narrow cleft with cliffs rising above on either side, and remained thus all the way down, which made the way much easier and less fraught.

As Miss Adri and I edged the horses up the slope of Redhorn Pass, which started with gentle rumpled red-stone hills, but grew stark black-grey and steep fair soon, the rain felt colder, and it met the wind coming down from the peaks, blowing it into our eyes. The welcome that Hollin had shown us started feeling like a dream.

Folks always talk about travel through the wilds as if there's some menacing creature behind every rock and around every bend in the path, and that's what the journey is about. Thing is, the wilds are mostly empty, and wild critters have more important things to do than bother folk passing through. You might get eyed by a bear at a distance, but they're like to avoid you afore you can even avoid them. No, the real hardship of travel is the discomfort.