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 on to 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-travelled route, southwest along the coast to the farther Holds. All 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 them. 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 sky-broom trees began. Strange trees that flourished only in that region of Pern. Trees, which 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 a runner-bred child had reached full growth, he or she was tested to see if they’d the right Blood for the job. Tenna’s legs had stopped growing by the time she’d reached her fifteenth full Turn. That was when she was assessed by a senior runner of another Bloodline. Tenna had been very nervous but her mother, in her usual off-handed way, had given her lanky daughter a long knowing look.
‘Nine children I’ve given your father, Fedri, and four are already runners. You’ll be one, too, never fear.’
`But Sedra’s -‘
Cesila held up her hand. ‘I know your sister’s mated and breeding but she did two Crosses before she found a man she had to have. So she counts, too. Gotta have proper Bloodlines to breed proper runners and it’s us who do that.’ Cesila paused to be sure Tenna would not interrupt again. ‘I came from a hold with twelve, all of them runners. And all breeding runners. You’ll run, girl. Put your mind at ease. You’ll run.’ Then she’d laughed. ‘It’s for how long, not will you, for a female.’
Tenna had decided a long time ago – when she had first been considered old enough to mind her younger siblings -that she’d prefer running to raising runners. She’d run until she could no longer lift her knees. She’d an aunt who’d never mated: ran until she was older than Cesila was now and then took over the management of a connecting station down Igen way. Should something happen and she couldn’t run any more, Tenna wouldn’t mind managing a station. Her mother ran hers proper, always had hot water ready to ease a runner’s aching limbs: good food, comfortable beds, and healing skills that rivalled what you could find in any hold. And it was always exciting, for you never knew who might run in that day, or where they’d be going. Runners crossed the continent regularly, bringing with them news from other parts of Pern. Many had interesting tales to tell of problems on the trace and how to cope with them. You heard of all other holds and halls, and the one dragonweyr, as well as what interested runners most specifically: what conditions were like and where traces might need maintenance after a heavy rain or landslide.