A Gift of Dragons - Anne McCaffrey [32]
Automatically, Tenna pulled a footstool from under the bench and held out her hand to receive Mallum’s right foot. She untied the shoe, and placed the now moistened poultice on the bruise while Irma handed her a bandage to fix it in place, taking a good look at the injury in the process.
“’Nother day’ll do it. Shoulda stayed off it this mornin’, too.”
“Not when I’d a chance to run with such a pretty girl,” Mallum said.
“Just like a man,” Irma said dismissively.
Tenna felt herself blushing, although she was beginning to believe he wasn’t just teasing. No one else had ever commented on her looks.
“It wasn’t a taxing leg, Irma. It’s level most of the way and a good surface,” she said, grinning shyly at Mallum as she tried to divert Irma’s criticism.
“Humph! Well, a hill run would’ve been downright foolish and it is flat this way.”
“Anything for Tenna to take back,” Mallum asked, getting back to business, “to make her first round-trip as a runner?”
“Should be,” Irma said, winking at Tenna for this informal inclusion into the ranks of Pern runners. “You could eat now . . . soup’s ready and so’s the bread.”
“Wouldn’t mind a bit myself,” Mallum said, carefully shifting his position as if easing the heat from the poultice, since the heat probably penetrated even the toughened sole of his foot.
By the time Tenna had eaten the light meal, two runners came in: a man she didn’t know by sight, on a long leg from Bitra with a pouch to go farther west; and one of Irma’s sons.
“I can run it to Ninety-Seven,” she said, the official designation of her family’s station.
“That’ll do,” the man said, panting and heaving from his long haul. “That’ll do fine.” He gasped for more breath. “It’s an urgent,” he got out. “Your name?”
“Tenna.”
“One . . . of . . . Fedri’s?” he asked and she nodded. “That’s good . . . enough for me. Ready to . . . hit the trace?”
“Sure.” She held out her hand for the pouch that he slipped off his belt, pausing only to mark the pass-over time on the flap as he gave it into her keeping. “You are?” she asked, sliding the pouch onto her own belt and settling it in the small of her back.
“Masso,” he said, reaching now for the cup of water Irma had hastened to bring him. He whooshed her off to the westward trace. With a final grateful farewell wave to Mallum, she picked up her heels as Mallum cheered her on with the traditional runner’s “yo-ho.”
She made it home in less time than it had taken her to reach Irma’s, and one of her brothers was there to take the pouch on the next westward lap. Silan nodded approval at the pass-over time, marked his own receipt, and was off.
“So, girl, you’re official,” her mother said, and embraced her. “And no need to sweat it at all, was there?”
“Running’s not always as easy,” her father said from the bench, “but you made good time and that’s a grand way to start. I hadn’t expected you back before midafternoon.”
Tenna did the short legs all around Station 97 for the first summer and into that winter, building her stamina for longer runs and becoming known at all the connecting stations. She made her longest run to Greystones, on the coast, just ahead of a very bad snowstorm. Then, because she was the only runner available in Station 18 when the exhausted carrier of an urgent message came in, she had to carry it two stations north. A fishing sloop would be delayed back to port until a new mast could be stepped. Since the vessel was overdue, there were those who’d be very glad to get the message she carried.
Such emergency news should have been drummed ahead, but the high winds would tear such a message to nonsense. It was a tough run, with cold as well as wind and snow across a good bit of the low-lying trace. Pacing herself, she did take an hour’s rest in one of the Thread shelters that dotted a trace. She made the distance in such good time in those conditions that she got extra stitches on