A Gift of Dragons (12 page)

Tenna laughed and, at Penda’s gesture, held out her hands and turned her left arm where Penda could see it.

“Hmmm. Mostly surface but there’s punctures on the heels of both hands.” She ran oddly soft fingers across Tenna’s hands, catching on three slivers so that Tenna shivered with the unpleasant sensation. “Soaking’ll do the most good. Loosen them up in your skin. Prolly clean ’em all out. Stickle’s a clever bush, harming you so, but this’ll help,” she said, and took a collection of bottles from the deep pocket in her apron and selected one. “Got to leave nothing to chance, ya know,” she added as she deftly splashed about twenty drops into the tub water. “Don’t worry about emptying the tub, either. It’ll run clear and’ll be fresh water by the time someone else climbs in. I’ll take out the slivers when you’ve soaked. You want a rub then? Or would you rather sleep first?”

“A bit of a rub would be marvelous, thanks. And before I sleep.”

“I’ll be back with some food.”

Tenna thought of the bathing room in her parents’ station and grinned. Nothing to compare to this, though she’d always thought her station was lucky to have a tub so long you could lie out flat in it: even the tallest runners could. But you had to keep the fire going under the tank all the time to be sure there was enough for when a bath was needed. Not like this—the water already hot and you only needing to step into the tub. The herbs scented the steamy water, making it feel softer against her skin. She lay back again.

She was nearly asleep when Penda returned with a tray containing klah, fresh-baked bread, a little pot of, appropriately enough, stickleberry preserve, and a bowl of porridge.

“Messages’ve already been handed over to them they was sent to, so you can sleep good, knowing the run’s well ended.”

Tenna consumed her meal, down to the last scrap. Penda was making quite a mixture with the massage oils, and the runner inhaled the scent of them. Then Tenna climbed on the table, letting her body go limp while Penda used a tweezer on the slivers still caught in her flesh. Penda counted as she deposited the wicked hairs. Nine, all told. She applied more medication and the last of the itching and discomfort vanished. Tenna sighed. Then Penda soothed tired muscles and tendons. Her touch was sure but gentle. She did announce that there were more punctures on the backs of Tenna’s arms and legs and proceeded to go at them with the tweezers to remove the slivers. That done, her motions became more soothing and Tenna relaxed again.

“There y’are. Just go along to the third door down on your left, Tenna,” Penda said softly when she had finished.

Tenna roused enough from the delightful, massage-induced stupor and wrapped the big towel tightly around her chest. Like most runner females, she didn’t have much of a bust, but that was an advantage.

“Don’t forget these,” Penda said, shoving the laces of her running shoes at her. “Clothes’ll be clean and dry when you wake.”

“Thanks, Penda,” Tenna said sincerely, astonished that she’d been drowsy enough to forget her precious shoes.

She padded down the hall in the thick anklets that Penda had slipped on her feet and pushed in the third door. Light from the corridor showed her where the bed was, straight across the narrow space, against the wall. Closing the door, she made her way to it in the dark. Dropping the towel, she leaned down to feel for the edge of the quilt she’d seen folded on the foot of the bed. She pulled it over her as she stretched out. Sighed once and fell asleep.

Good-natured laughter and movement down the hall roused her. Someone had half opened the glowbasket, so she saw her own clothes, clean, dry, and neatly folded on the stool where she’d dropped her running shoes. She realized she hadn’t even taken off the anklets before she got into bed. She wriggled her toes in them. No tenderness there. Her hands were stiff but cool, so Penda’d gotten out all the slivers. The skin of her left arm and leg was stiff, though, and she threw back the quilt and tried to see the injuries. She couldn’t, but there was a little too much heat in the skin on the back of her left arm for her liking, and her right leg. Five sort-of-sore spots she couldn’t really check at all other than identifying them as “sore.” And, when she checked her legs, two bad red bumps on her thigh, one in the left calf and two on the fleshy part of her right leg by the shinbone. She had suffered more hurt than she’d realized. And stickle slivers could work their way through your flesh and into your blood. If one got to your heart, you could die from it. She groaned and rose. Shook out her legs, testing the feel of her muscles, and, thanks to Penda’s massage, they didn’t ache. She dressed and then carefully folded the quilt, placing it just as she’d found it on the bed.

Making her way back to the stairs, she passed the bathing room and heard the hum of masculine voices, then a laugh that was clearly from a female runner. As she came down the stairs, she was aware of the smell of roasting meats. Her stomach rumbled. One long narrow window lit the hall that led to the main room, and she gauged that she had slept most of the day. Perhaps she ought to have had a healer check out the scratches, but Penda knew what to do as well as any Hall-trained healer . . . probably better, since she was a station manager’s mate.

“Now, here’s a one who’s prompt for her supper,” Torlo said, calling the attention of the runners sitting around the room to Tenna’s appearance. He introduced her. “Had a brush with Haligon early this morning,” he added, and Tenna did not fail to note that this brash personage was known to them all from the nods and grimaces on their faces.

“I tol’ Lord Groghe myself,” one of the older runners said, nodding his head and looking solemn, “that there’d be an accident . . . then what’d he say to that? I asked him. Someone hurt because a wild lad won’t respect what’s our rights and propitty.” Then he nodded directly at Tenna. “You aren’t the only one he’s knocked aside. Dinncha hear him coming?”

“Met him on the hill curve, she said,” Torlo answered before Tenna could open her own mouth.

“Bad place, bad place. Runner can’t see around it,” a second man said, and nodded his sympathy to her. “See you’ve scratches? Penda put her good junk on ya?” Tenna nodded. “You’ll be right then. I’ve seen your kin on the traces, haven’t I? Betchur one of Fedri and Cesila’s, aincha?” He smiled knowingly at the others. “You’re prettier than she was and she was some pretty woman.”

Tenna decided to ignore the compliment and admitted to her parentage. “Have you been through Station Ninety-Seven?”

“A time or two, a time or two,” he said, grinning amiably. His runner’s belt was covered with stitches.

Torlo had come up beside her and now took her left arm to peer at the side she couldn’t really see well.

“Punctures,” he said in a flat tone.

The other runners came to be sure his verdict was correct. They all nodded sagely and resumed their seats.

“Sometimes I wonder if all those berries’re worth the risk of them slivers in spring,” the veteran runner said.

“Worse time of the Turn to fall into them,” she was told again.

“Misler, you run over to Healer Hall,” Torlo said to one of them.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,” Tenna said, because you had to pay healers and she then wouldn’t have enough for good leathers.

“Being as how it was the Lord Holder’s runnerbeast knocked you in, he’ll pay for it,” Torlo said, sensing her reluctance and winking at her.

“One of these days he’ll have to pay out blood money iffen he doesn’t bring that Haligon up short and
make
him quit our traces. Did those shod hooves leave many holes?” another man asked her.

“No,” she had to admit. “Surface sprang right back up.”

“Hmmm, that’s what it’s supposed to do.”

“But we don’t need Haligon galloping up and down like traces was put there for
his
benefit.”

Misler departed on his errand and then, after each runner spoke his or her name and home station, a glass of wine was poured for her. She started to demur but Torlo eyed her sternly.

“You’re not on the run list this day, girl.”

“I need to finish my first Cross,” she said wistfully as she took the glass and found an empty seat.

“You will, lass, you will,” the first man—Grolly—said so assuredly as he held his glass up that she was heartened. The others all seconded his words.

A few scratches and maybe the three-four punctures were not going to keep her from reaching the western seashore. She sipped her wine.

The runners who’d been bathing descended now and were served their wine by the time Misler came trotting back, a man in healer colors following behind, with a hop and a skip to keep up with his long-legged escort.

Beveny introduced himself and asked for Penda to join him—a nicety that pleased Tenna and gave her a very good opinion of the journeyman. The consultation was conducted right there in the main hall since the injuries were to visible portions of her body. And the other runners were genuinely interested in knowing the worst of her condition and offered suggestions, most of them knowledgeable as to which herbs should be used and how efficacious they had been on such and such an occasion. Beveny kept a grin on his face as if he was well used to runner chaffering. As he probably was.

“I think this one, and the two on your leg, may still have slivers in them,” Beveny said at length. “Nothing a poultice won’t draw out overnight, I’m sure.”

There were approving nods and wise smiles from the audience. Poultices were then discussed again and at length and the appropriate one decided on. During this part of the consultation, Tenna was installed in a comfortable padded chair, a long stool affair attached to the front of it so her legs could stretch out. She’d never been fussed over so much in her life, but it was a runner thing: she’d seen her mother and father take the same personal care of anyone arriving at their station with an injury. But to be the center of so much attention—and at Fort Station—was embarrassing in the extreme for Tenna and she kept trying to discount the urgency of such minor wounds. She did offer her packet of her mother’s poultice, and three of the runners remarked favorably on Cesila’s famous poultice, but hers was clearly for bruises, not infections, so the healer told her to keep it for emergencies.

“Which I hope you won’t have, of course,” he said, smiling at her as he mixed—with the hot water Penda fetched—an aromatic concoction that everyone now in the room had to approve.

Keenly aware that she must be properly modest and forbearing, as well as brave, Tenna braced herself for the treatment. Hot poultices, however therapeutic, could be somewhat uncomfortable. Then the mixture was ready. With deft fingers, Healer Beveny deposited neat blobs, no larger than his thumbnail, on the sore spots. He must have judged the heat just right, because none was too hot. He made sure to position the patches right over each blob before securing them with bandage strips that Penda had produced. Tenna felt each of the ten hot spots, but the sensation was not all that unpleasant.

“I’ll check tomorrow, Tenna, but I don’t think we have to worry about any of them,” Beveny said with such conviction that Tenna was relieved.

“Nor do you, here at Fort Station with the Healer Hall a stretch away,” said Torlo, and courteously saw Beveny to the door and watched a polite few moments until the healer was halfway to his Hall.

“Nice fella,” he said to anyone listening, and smiled at Tenna. “Ah, here’s the food.”

Evidently that meal had been held up for her to be treated, because now Penda led in the drudge carrying the roast platter with others behind him, laden with large bowls of steaming food.

“Rosa,” she said, pointing to one of the female runners, “get the board. Spacia, grab a fork and spoon for Tenna. She’s not to move. Grolly, her glass is empty. . . .” As she directed the others to serve the injured runner, she herself carved fine slices from the roasted ribs of herdbeast. “The rest of you, get on line.”

Tenna’s embarrassment returned, waited on as she was by Rosa and Spacia, who cheerfully performed their assigned tasks. Always she had been the one to help, so this situation was quite novel. Of course, it was also a runner thing, to be cosseted in need, but she’d never been the recipient before.

Two more batches of runners arrived in from south and east. When they came back from bathing, they had to be told all about Haligon’s forcing Tenna off the trace and how she had sticklebush punctures that were severe enough to require a healer. She got the distinct impression that almost everyone had had a run-in with this infamous Haligon, or knew someone who had. Eventually the tale had been told to everyone and the conversation changed to talk of the Gather three days hence.

Tenna sighed softly to herself. Three days? She’d be fully recovered by then and have to run on. She really did want to get the extra stitches for her first Cross. A Gather, even one at Fort, was not as important as upgrading herself. Well, nearly. It wasn’t as if this were the last Gather she’d ever have a chance to attend, even if it was the first for her at the First Hold on Pern.

This was home station for two girls. Rosa had a cap of very tight dark curls and a pert face with mischievous eyes. Spacia, with long blond hair tied back, runner-wise, had a more dignified way about her although she kept up a wickedly bantering conversation with the younger male runners among others there. Then there was an informal concert for Tenna, some of the newer songs that the Harper Hall was airing. Rosa led, Spacia adding an alto line while three of the other runners joined in, one with a little whistle and the others with their voices. The evening became quite enjoyable, especially as either Grolly or Torlo kept filling Tenna’s wineglass.

Rosa and Spacia helped her up the stairs, one on either side of her, with the excuse that the bandages mustn’t loosen. They chattered about what they intended to wear to the Gather and who they hoped to dance with.

“We’re on line tomorrow,” Rosa said as they got her to her bed, “so we’ll probably be off before you get down. Those poultices ought to do the trick.”

They both wished her a good night’s sleep. Her head was spinning as she lay down, but pleasantly, and she drifted into sleep very quickly.