Page 30 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

The room was very quiet.

"If it means I am better placed to protect her," Torstein went on, turning back to Dawud, "and that no one will look down upon her, or call her less than she is, then I agree. With my whole heart."

Samira stared at him.

This was all moving far too fast. Two days ago she had been a merchant's daughter with a secret she did not know she carried. Overnight her life had become bound up in an ancient prophecy that was unraveling before her eyes, faster than she could follow. And now this man was offering to give up his gods for her as easily as he had stepped between her and a blade.

"Samira." Her father's voice was gentle. "The law allows me to give you in marriage without asking you. I will not do it. If you say no, we will find another way, even if I do not yet know what it is."

She looked at Zohra. Zohra said nothing at all, which told her everything.

She looked at Torstein. He was waiting. He did not push, and he did not plead.

He had come for a stone and found her instead. He had crossed the whole of the sea not knowing she was at the end of it. And somehow, in dreams, she had seen his face long before he ever saw hers.

It is you.

"If there is no other path," she said slowly, "then I will take this one."

Torstein let out a breath as if he had been holding it a while.

"You need to leave as soon as it can be done," Dawud said. "The longer you remain, the greater the threat. It will be done tomorrow, quietly. The qadi is an old friend. He will come to the house."

***

THE FOLLOWING DAY, in the long room with the doors barred and the guards on the roof, before the qadi and two witnesses, Torstein Hagansson spoke the shahada.

His accent was thick and the words did not sit easily in his mouth. But he said them slowly and clearly, and he looked at no one while he said them but the old qadi, who listened with his head bowed. When it was done, the qadi raised his eyes and studied the Norseman for a long moment. Then he nodded once.

For the mahr, a mandatory gift of payment, Torstein drew a silver ring and laid it in Samira's hands.

Dawud gave her in marriage with his voice steady and his eyes wet.

And so before witnesses, Torstein Hagansson of the Orkney Isles, under the Norwegian crown, bound himself for life to Samira al-Idrissi of Fez, Morocco.

***

Chapter 12

It took two days to pack up her life.

Samira was given a large chest, two saddle packs and a roll behind her saddle, and she stood in the middle of her room with everything she owned around her and could not begin.

Zohra began for her. "Start with warm clothes."

In went heavy wool, a felted cloak of the kind the mountain men wore, thick wraps, boots lined with sheepskin. Her mother's kohl pot. The brass balance. Her koummya and telek and lamt shield. A small Qur'an in a leather case. An array of jasmine oil, healing salves and herbs, seeds for planting and several spices so she would have something of home in the new world.

The pendant case was kept with Torstein.

Torstein spent those two days in the souk with Mathias, spending silver to purchase gifts for his bride. He came back with a hooded cloak of oiled wool, sheepskins for her saddle, gloves, a copper cup with a lid that screwed down tight, and furs he had carried from Orkney to trade and did not trade.

"This is too much," Samira said.

"You have never been cold. Not the way you are about to be."

He also bought a small ivory comb with birds carved along its spine, because he saw it on a stall and could not make himself walk on. He also traded several items for material and cloths and garments. He thought only of things that he could place around his homestead that would remind her of Morocco, of her home. Then he saw an intricately carved pack of ornaments for her braids.

"That does not look like practical supplies," Mathias observed.