Page 25 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

She darted left to take the next man. Torstein was there first. She feinted right and went low, and somehow his shoulder was there too, broad as a door, between her and the steel.

"Get out of my way!" she snapped.

"No."

"I do not need your protection!"

"You have it anyway."

A blade came at his ribs and he turned it aside. Another came from the left and he caught the man's wrist and twisted until something gave. Every time Samira moved, he moved with her. Every time a knife came toward her, his body was already in its path. He did not think about it. He could not have stopped himself if he had tried.

She ducked beneath his arm, quick as a cat, and went for the man he had just disarmed. Her blade caught the man across the forearm. But a second had come in behind her, and his knife opened a thin red line along the back of her hand before she could turn.

Samira hissed and pulled her hand back. Blood welled across her knuckles.

Something surged through Torstein then that he had no name for.

"How dare you touch my woman!" he roared.

He landed a bone-crunching blow to the man's jaw. When Torstein was done with him, the man lay against the wall and did not get up.

The rest of them fell back a step.

Torstein stood over Samira with his chest heaving. She was staring at him with an expression he could not read.

Then the two men from the mouth of the alley came in behind them, and there was no more room for anything but the fight.

Torstein turned. Samira turned. Without a word, they put their backs together.

"Now will you let me fight?" she said, over her shoulder.

"Now I need you to," he replied.

And she laughed. It was short and breathless and entirely unexpected, and he felt it through his own spine.

They fought as they had fought two days before. When he stepped forward, she covered the ground he had left. When she lunged, he turned to hold the side she had opened. The men pressed them, and pressed again, and could find no way through.

One of the attackers lost his head wrap in the struggle. Beneath it his face was fair and his beard reddish, and the curse that came out of him was not Arabic.

"He is no Maghribi," Samira said sharply.

"No," Torstein said. "He is Norman."

A roar came from the mouth of the alley. Njal came round the corner with his sword drawn and Mathias close behind him, both of them having snatched their blades from the alcove at the gate. Behind them came Dawud's two guards at last, red-faced and furious.

The cloaked men broke. They went up and over the high wall at the end of the alley, hauling each other up by the arms, and dragged the man Torstein had felled with them. The water carrier went last. He did not look back this time.

The alley fell quiet.

Torstein turned to Samira and took her hand before she could stop him. He turned it over in his own. The cut ran across the back of it, shallow and bleeding freely.

"It is a scratch," she said.

"It is your blood!" His voice came out rough. He tore a strip from the hem of his garment without taking his eyes off the wound and began to bind it. His hands were not quite steady.

"You ruined your clothing."

"I have another."