Page 45 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

Samira sat by the fire in dry clothes with a cup of hot ale between her hands and listened. She had picked up enough Norn now to follow most of it. What she did not follow, Leif leaned over and explained to her in the mix of Arabic and Latin.

"The marriage in Fez was a true one," Leif said. "Nobody here doubts it. But it was made by your law, before your people, in your tongue. Not one free man of the north stood witness to it. No bride-price was counted out before men who could swear to it at the Thing. If anyone stands up in Kirkwall and says you are his frilla and not his wife, there's no man in Orkney who can prove otherwise."

"You were there," she said. "You saw."

"It is not enough. It does not hold here."

"And a frilla, a thrall," Samira said slowly, "has what?"

It was Mathias who answered. "Nothing. She can be cast aside when her man tires of her. If he dies, she has no claim on anything he owned. Her children have no claim either. And any man who harms her pays a thrall's price, if he pays at all."

The fire cracked. Samira looked down into her cup.

"If Torstein fell," Leif said, "in a storm, in a fight, from a horse, it would not matter what was said in Fez. You would be alone in a country that does not know your name, and anybody could take you. As these men tried to take you this morning."

Torstein got up from the bench and came around the fire. He crouched in front of her so their eyes were level, the way he had done on the ship when she hid her arm from him.

"They are right, Samira. If anything happens to me, you remain unprotected under our law." He took the cup from her hands and set it on the floor. "I am not deciding this for you. I am asking you."

She waited.

"Marry me again. Here, by our law, before free men, by oaths spoken and a blessing of the local priest. I will count your bride-price into your hand before witnesses. It will be written down. After that, nobody in the north can call you anything but my wife, and if I fall, what is mine is yours, and any man who lays a hand on you answers to the jarl." He held her gaze. "The oath I made you in Fez by reciting the shahada still stands. This does not undo it. This is giving you my name while you live here."

Samira looked at him for a long time.

"Allah heard us the first time," she said. "Your God can hear us now."

Torstein nodded and let out a deep sigh of relief.

***

THEY WERE WED THAT evening in a small chapel by Father Donnan. Oaths were exchanged, the wedding witnessed, and everything written down and recorded.

Torstein counted her bride-price into her two hands before the crew and Hrafn's household. Silver pennies, English and Danish and one from Byzantium, twenty marks of it, heavy as a stone. On top of it he laid a gold arm ring.

Then he drew a sword from its sheath. It was old and plain, the grip worn smooth by other men's hands.

"My father's," he said. "And his father's before him. By our custom you keep it for our son."

She took it. The weight of it pulled her arms down, and she had to brace to hold it level.

The crew were watching her. Leif had told her the night before that a bride gives the groom a sword in return. She had her jambiya, shorter than the koummya she used.

She held it out to him hilt first.

A murmur went around the men. Torstein looked at the knife for a long moment. Then he took it and slid it into his own belt, and his hand stayed on it after.

The oaths were short. He swore to keep her and to hold her as his wife. She swore the same, and he had to help her with the Norn.

Before the priest could raise his hand to bless them, Torstein stopped. He reached inside his tunic and drew out a small parcel wrapped in faded cloth, the one he had carried against his chest since Glenorchy.

For your wedding, Morag had said. Ye'll ken when ye have need of it.

He had laughed at her. He was not laughing now.

He unwrapped it in his palm. Inside lay two rings. The larger was silver, worked all the way around with an intricate eternity knot that had no beginning and no end. The smaller was finer, its band traced with a ring of tiny roses, each flowing into the next in the same unbroken line.

Samira looked at them, then up at him. "Where did these come from?"