Page 57 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

Samira stared up at him. He saw her flinch as if he had struck her, and he knew he had gone too far, and he could not make himself take it back, because he was too afraid.

"I did not cross an ocean," he said, more quietly, "to bury you for your mother's cause."

"It is not her cause. It is mine." She rose slowly to face him. "I am asking you not to make decisions for me. I need you to trust me and ask me."

"I am your husband." His voice was hoarse. "And on this I will not ask."

Somewhere down by the horses, Leif had gone very quiet.

Samira looked at Torstein for a long time. Then she nodded, once, and turned and went into the tent without another word.

Torstein walked down to the shore in the dark and stood there with his fists clenched until the cold drove the worst of the anger out of him. He told himself he would speak to her in the morning. He told himself she would see sense.

He did not see her slip out of the tent an hour later, while Mathias dozed at the fire and Njal walked the far side of the camp. He did not see her take the boist from the pack where he had set it down to wash. He did not see her stop, and turn back, and lay a folded scrap of vellum on his furs before she left.

***

Chapter 22

Loch Fyne

Torstein came back from the shore at first light meaning to set things right.

The tent was empty.

A folded scrap of vellum lay on his furs, weighted with a stone from the loch. The writing was hers, the curling Arabic script he had spent a long Orkney winter learning from Brother Aiden. He read it slowly, one word at a time.

I go to finish what I promised destiny. I have not left you. Follow me as my husband, not my keeper.

He read it twice. Then he folded it and put it inside his tunic, where the boist should have been.

Njal was already crouched at the edge of the camp, reading the ground. "South. Along the loch. Some hours ago."

"The pendant?" Mathias asked.

Torstein looked at the pack by the water. He did not need to open it.

"She goes to Saddell," he said. "On foot and alone. And those riders are somewhere behind us on this very road."

Nobody said anything to that.

"Saddle the horses," Torstein said.

They rode hard all that day and the next. The rain came down in sheets and washed the tracks from the road, and twice Njal lost her trail entirely. She had kept to the woods above the shore, where a horse could not follow. Torstein stayed on the road because it was the only way to reach Tarbert before she did.

He did not sleep. He sat with his back to a tree and the note against his chest, and he thought about the words he had thrown at her by the fire, and he wished he could cut out his own tongue.

Follow me as my husband.

He intended to.

***

The Road to Tarbert

IT RAINED FOR TWO DAYS.

Samira kept to the woods above the shore of Loch Fyne and went south, always south, the way Leif had shown her on the map in Thurso. She had her koummya, her telek, the pendant, a skin of water and a little bread and some coins. The bread was gone by the first night.