A Gift of Dragons - Anne McCaffrey [28]
Tenna often thought proudly of the tradition she was carrying on. It was a comfort on long solitary journeys. Right now, the running was good: the ground was firm but springy, a surface that had been assiduously maintained since the ancient runners had planted it. Not only did the mossy stuff make running easier but it identified a runner’s path. A runner would instantly feel the difference in the surface, if he, or she, strayed off the trace.
Slowly, as full Belior rose behind her, her way became illuminated by the moon’s light and she picked up her pace, running easily, breathing freely, her hands carried high, chest height, with elbows tucked in. No need to leave a “handle,” as her father called it, to catch the wind and slow the pace. At times like these, with good footing, a fair light, and a cool evening, you felt like you could run forever. If there weren’t a sea to stop you.
She ran on, able to see the flow of the ridge, and by the time the trace started to descend again, Belior was high enough to light her way. She saw the stream ahead and slowed cautiously . . . though she’d been told that the ford had a good pebbly surface . . . and splashed through the ankle-high cold water, up onto the bank, veering slightly south, picking up the trace again by its springy surface.
She’d be over halfway now to Fort Hold and should make it by dawn. This was a well-traveled route, southwest along the coast to the farther Holds. Most of what she carried right now was destined for Fort Holders, so it was the end of the line for both the pouch and herself. She’d heard so much about the facilities at Fort that she didn’t quite believe it. Runners tended to understatement rather than exaggeration. If a runner told you a trace was dangerous, you believed it! But what they said about Fort was truly amazing.
Tenna came from a running family: father, uncles, cousins, grandfathers, brothers, sisters, and two aunts were all out and about the traces that crisscrossed Pern from Nerat Tip to High Reaches Hook, from Benden to Boll.
“It’s bred in us,” her mother had said, answering the queries of her younger children. Cesila managed a large runner station, just at the northern Lemos end of the Keroon plains where the immense skybroom trees began. Strange trees that flourished only in that region of Pern. Trees that, a much younger Tenna had been sure, were where the Benden Weyr dragons took a rest in their flights across the continent. Cesila had laughed at Tenna’s notion.
“The dragons of Pern don’t need to rest anywhere, dear. They just go between to wherever they need to go. You probably saw some of them out hunting their weekly meal.”
In her running days, Cesila had completed nine full Crosses a Turn until she’d married another runner and started producing her own bag of runners-to-be.
“Lean we are in the breeding, and leggy, most of us, with big lungs and strong bones. Ah, there now, a few come out who’re more for speed than distance but they’re handy enough at Gathers, passing the winning line before the others have left the starting ribbon. We have our place on the world same as holders and even weyrfolk. Each to his, or her, own. Weaver and tanner, and farmer, and fisher, and smith and runner and all.”
“That’s not the way we was taught to sing the Duty Song,” Tenna’s younger brother had remarked.
“Maybe,” Cesila had said with a grin, “but it’s the way I sing it and you can, too. I must have a word with the next harper through here. He can change his words if he wants us to take his messages.” And she gave her head one of her emphatic shakes to end that conversation.
As soon as runner-bred children reached full growth, they were tested to see if they’d the right Blood for the job. Tenna’s legs