Page 33 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

"In that cold country you will be tempted to make yourself small. Do not. You are the keeper of the stone, and you will walk into the new world with your chin up."

They gave each other a tearful, heartfelt goodbye.

"Thank you, Zohra, for preparing me all these years, and treating me as your own daughter."

"It was my greatest pleasure," Zohra replied.

Finally, it was Samira's turn to bid her father farewell.

"I have done a terrible thing to you," Dawud said. "I am sending my child away to save her, and I will not know for the rest of my life whether I was right."

"You were right."

He put his hand on her head as he had when she was small and said the words over her, and his voice held to the end. Then he looked past her to Torstein.

"I am handing you my greatest treasure."

"I will protect her with my life," Torstein replied.

They rode out into the dark. Samira looked back at the turn of the lane and saw only the lamps above the wall and shapes beneath them too dark to tell apart.

Everything she had ever known was behind that wall. Ahead were twelve men whose language she did not speak, but their Arabic was passable enough to understand. She was determined that she would learn their tongue before she set foot on their land.

But their customs and behavior were strange to her. They were loud and raucous. They drank far too much for her estimation yet seemed to remain sober-minded, and for men so bulky and heavyset they were swift and light on their feet. She wondered if this was what Ibn Fadlan had felt, the emissary so far away from home in the company of strangers.

She had noticed an expression of surprise from some of them when Torstein first notified them she was his wife and not a thrall. But they soon left well enough alone.

Torstein remained close beside her, ready to protect at any sign of threat. His heart was full to bursting with the knowledge that Samira was his now. Their lives bonded for eternity. That restlessness that had gnawed at him for so many years was completely silent.

***

Chapter 13

The trouble came a day short of Salé.

Samira saw it before anyone else did. A flock of sandgrouse lifted out of the wadi ahead, wheeled once over the track, and flew off north without coming down again. They had meant to drink there, and something had stopped them. Above the far bank a thin haze of dust hung in the air, though there was no wind to raise it. She leaned from her mule and studied the ground. Sandal prints crossed the track, heavy at the heel, their edges still crisp. The night's damp had set a thin crust on the sand at dawn, and these had broken it since. Many men. Not long ago. No goat tracks among them, so not herders.

The guide rode on ahead, humming to himself.

She drew level with Torstein. "Men in the watercourse. Ten, perhaps more. They crossed after sunrise."

He did not ask how she knew. He looked once at the ridge, then turned and said something low in Norn, and Njal and Mathias loosened the ties on their sword hilts without breaking stride.

Samira felt a burning sensation on her birthmark just as eleven men on foot came out of the dry watercourse with spears and long knives.

"Bandits," the guide said.

"No." Torstein was already off his mule. "Bandits do not go for the back of the train first."

Four of them came straight for Samira. She came off her mule with the blade already in her hand and put her back to the animal's flank, and Torstein arrived there half a heartbeat later like a wall dropping out of the sky.

"Do not get in my way," she said.

"Too late."

Torstein and his men dealt with eight of the attackers swiftly, disarming them and leaving them incapacitated. The remaining three fled, having been chased off by two horsemen who had appeared at the back of the attackers in the distance.

Torstein crouched beside the nearest of the fallen men, cut the purse from his belt and tipped it into his palm. Norman silver. He checked two more and found the same.