Page 44 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

"Easy now," the nearest one said in Norse. "No one wants you hurt."

"Then go back the way you came."

He grinned. It showed a broken tooth. "She speaks our tongue, the little thrall."

Then they rushed her.

She cut the first one across the forearm as he reached for her, and he howled and let go. The second got an arm round her from behind and lifted her clean off her feet. She drove her heel back into his knee and felt it give, and they went down together into the shallows. Cold water closed over her head. She came up with her blade still in her hand and her scarf gone, and the man with the sack was on her, and she could not get her feet under her in the soft sand.

"Olvir!" she screamed.

The sack came down over her head.

Then she heard the sound she would remember for the rest of her life. Not a shout. A roar, coming down the shore from the hall.

The hands let go of her. She tore the sack off and got to her knees in the water in time to see Torstein sprinting towards her, sword drawn, his hair flying behind him, his feet bare, his chest bare. He reached the first man. The man went down and did not get up again.

After that it was very fast. Olvir had come running with his spear. Leif and Mathias were half dressed and fully armed. Njal came last with an axe and no shirt on. Two of the attackers ran for the dunes and got away. One lay in the shallows and would never rise again. Mathias knelt on the chest of the last one and held a knife at his throat.

Torstein came into the water and pulled her up by both arms.

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Are you hurt, Samira?"

"No. I am all right." Her teeth were chattering so hard she could barely get the words out.

He looked at the blade in her hand. He looked at her face. Then he pulled her against him in the freezing water and held her so hard she could not breathe, and she felt him shaking, and she knew it was not from the cold.

***

Chapter 18

They questioned the man on the shingle while the sun came up.

Torstein stood behind him with his arms folded and did not speak, and the man looked at him more often than he looked at Mathias.

"Silver," the man said at last. "A man at Dyflin. We were to take the woman off the ship before it crossed and bring her south again. He said she would be easy."

"What man?"

"A churchman, by his clothes. French tongue. I never had his name."

Samira saw Leif and Torstein look at each other over the prisoner's head.

"And you thought nothing of stealing a man's wife from his own shore," Mathias said.

"Wife?" The man spat blood. "He said she was a thrall-woman bought in the south. The Hagansson's bed-slave with no kin north of the sea." He looked at Torstein, and for all his fear there was something almost like complaint in it. "There's no blood-price on a frilla worth the having. Who comes for her? Nobody. That's what he said. That's what everyone will say."

Torstein moved. Leif caught his arm before his fist could connect with the man's face.

"Let him finish," Leif said quietly. "He's telling us something we need to hear."

***

THEY TALKED ABOUT IT in Hrafn's hall with the doors shut and the prisoner locked in the byre.