‘I can run it to 97,’ 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,’ and 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 on to 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 daughter. ‘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 mid-afternoon.’
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 her belt, marking her rise towards journeyman rank.
This run to Fort Hold would be two more stitches on her belt if she finished in good time. And she was sure she would . . . with the comforting sort of certainty which older runners said you began to sense when you’d been travelling the traces a while. She was also now accustomed to judging how long she had run by the feeling in her legs. None of the leaden feeling that accompanied real fatigue; she was still running easily. So long as she had no leg cramp, she knew she could continue effortlessly at this good pace until she reached Station 300 at Fort. Leg cramp was always a hazard and could strike you without warning. She was careful to renew the tablets a runner chewed to ease off a cramp but a bad one could bench a runner for weeks so she was careful to avoid them. And was not too slow about grabbing a handful of any useful herbs she spotted which helped prevent the trouble.
She oughtn’t to be letting her mind wander like this, but with an easy stride and a pleasant night in which to travel, it was hard to keep her mind on the job. She would, smartly enough, if there were complications like bad weather or poor light. This was also far too well travelled country for there to be dangers like tunnel snakes, which were about the worst risk that runners encountered: usually at dawn or dusk when the creatures were out hunting. Of course renegades, while not as common as tunnel snakes, were more dangerous, since they were human, not animal. Although that distinction was often moot. As runners rarely carried marks, they were not as likely to be waylaid as messengers on runnerbeasts or other solitary travellers. Tenna hadn’t heard of any renegade attacks this far west but sometimes those people were so vicious that they might just pull up a runner for spite and malice. In the past three Turns, there had been two cases – and those up in northern Lemos and Bitra – where the runners had been hamstrung out of sheer malevolence.