Page 58 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

She did not let herself think about Torstein. When she did, her eyes stung and she walked faster.

On the evening of the second day she smelled smoke.

A woman sat beneath an overhang of rock beside the track with a small fire in front of her. She was wrapped in a hooded cloak, and there was a quarterstaff across her knees. She had seen Samira before Samira saw her. The staff did not move, but her hands had shifted on it.

Samira stopped at a distance and showed her empty palms.

The woman looked her over. Her cloak, her boots, her sodden scarf. "You are a long way from home," she said in the Gaelic of these parts.

Samira shook her head. "I do not understand."

The woman tried Norse, badly. Then, with a frown, Latin. "Where are you from?"

Samira answered in Latin. "Far from here."

"Your cloak is Norse."

"It was a gift."

The woman studied her a moment longer. Then her eyes went to Samira's hands, which were shaking with cold, and something in her face gave way.

"Sit," she said. "You look half starved."

Her name was Naomi. She did not give another, and Samira did not ask for one. She shared oatcakes and hard cheese and a handful of dried apples, and Samira ate them so fast she was ashamed.

"When did you last eat?"

"Yesterday. I think."

"You think." Naomi pushed the rest of the cheese toward her. "'Tis a poor way to travel, alone and hungry."

"You travel alone."

"Si. But I remember to eat."

Samira laughed despite herself.

The fire between them smoked and spat in the wet. Samira watched the smoke rise above the rock and drift out over the trees, and she frowned.

"Anyone on the far shore can see that," she said.

Naomi glanced at it. "I know. But there is nothing to be done in this rain."

"There is." Samira got up and drew her koummya. "May I?"

She chose a spot where the ground was firm and dug a hole as deep as her forearm, wider at the bottom than the top. Then a second, smaller hole an arm's length away, angled down so that it met the first beneath the ground. She fed dry kindling from Naomi's pack into the deep hole and lit it with a coal from the old fire.

The flames caught and settled below the surface. The small hole drew air down into them, and the fire burned bright and hot and almost without smoke.

Naomi knelt and held her hands over it. "How does it burn under the ground?"

"Fire needs air. The small hole feeds it from the side, so it keeps burning for hours." Samira sat back on her heels. "It gives the same heat. But no one can see it from a distance, and the smoke is very little."

"Who taught you this?"

"My mother's people. They live where there is no cover at all. A fire on open sand can be seen for a day's ride." She smiled faintly. "Raiders are always watching."

"It is incredible." Naomi looked up at her. "You have given me far more than I gave you."