Chapter 14
Across the Northern Water
Finally, the snekkja was sailing back on the water heading to Orkney, with the full crew plus the addition of traded goods and Samira.
To say that Leif and the rest of the crew were shocked when Torstein arrived in Salé with a wife in tow was an understatement.
But the men were eager to pull up anchor and head home to colder climes.
Despite their loud, raucous, and sometimes crude manners, Samira was getting used to the Vikings.
They remained courteous and showed her deference because of Torstein, but she knew they did not all fully accept her.
That would come with time, and trust could only be established through words backed by action.
Little did she know, one of those moments had arrived.
Three days out of Salé, the coast of Iberia lay low and brown to the east.
Samira had learned the ship in those three days. It was smaller than any vessel her father had ever traded from. Thirty-two oars, sixteen to a side, and one square sail on a single mast. No deck below to go down into. No cabin. The men slept where they sat.
On the first night, when it became clear there was nowhere aboard a woman might have privacy, Torstein had solved the problem without discussing it with her.
She had come back from the rail to find four of his men rigging a second awning across the last few feet of the stern, aft of the steering position, walled on three sides with hide and canvas and lashed down tight. It was enough to stand up in, and enough to sleep in, and it could be closed.
She had looked at Torstein, who was thirty feet away pretending to be occupied with a rope.
"It is the stern," he had said, without turning round. "Worst of the spray but best of the privacy. Nobody comes aft of the steering oar without my leave, and after tonight nobody comes aft of it at all." A pause. "You will want to pray. You cannot do that with thirty men watching you."
He had gone back to his rope and had not looked at her once during the entire exchange.
Slowly, Samira felt something like warmth bloom in her chest. He was forever seeking her comfort, and she was grateful for it.
So that was where she slept, in the furs, in the little walled space at the stern, with the whole Atlantic on the other side of two inches of oak.
Often her husband would join her, if he was not on watch, and she soon got used to his warmth and the feel of the boat's rocking.
For a woman with the desert in her veins, she was becoming accustomed to the sea.
And that was where she was, three days later, when something woke her.
***
NOT A SOUND. A FEELING.
The motion of the ship had changed, sharper, with no rhythm to it.
Then the shouting started.
She was out of the furs and had her boots half on before she had decided to move. She pulled her scarf tight, wrapped it twice at the throat so the wind could not take it, and pushed out through the awning flap into the weather.
The sky in the west was the color of a bruise, and rain was coming across the water in a solid gray wall about two hundred paces out and closing fast.
Torstein was already at the mast, roaring orders. He saw her before she had gone three steps.
He came at her fast enough that she nearly stepped back.
"No!" He took her by both shoulders and turned her bodily toward the stern awning, which she resented. "Get back in there. Or get down there." He pointed at the rail behind the after strake. "And get low, both hands on that rail, and do nae let go of it for anything."
"I can—"
"Both hands. On the rail, Samira!" His face was very close to hers and there was something in it she had not seen before and could not read. "I have not the time to argue with you and I have not the men to spare to fish you out of the sea. Brace and hold on."
He let go of her and was gone.
Samira stood exactly where he had left her for approximately four seconds.
Then the rain hit, and the world went white and roaring, and she went forward into it.
***
THEY WERE REEFING THE sail. She could see that much even through the rain.
Reefing meant reducing it. In a strong wind a full sail would drive a ship over onto her side or tear itself off the mast.
Six men were hauling the yard down. Others were fighting the wet canvas.
Samira reached the nearest line and put her hands on it beside a young crewman's.
He looked at her. His mouth opened.
"Pull," she said.
He pulled.
They got the cloth against the yard. Then it had to be tied, and she stopped, because the knot was not one she knew.
This was something else. Two turns taken round the timber, then the end hitched back against its own standing part and pulled hard the other way.
She watched him do it once.
Then she went to the next line along and did it herself, exactly as he had done it, and hauled it tight, and it held.
The young man looked at the knot. Then at her. Then he moved to the next one, and she went with him, and they worked forward along the yard together.
"SAMIRA!"
Torstein came down the deck at her through the rain with murder in his face.
"I told you to get to the rail!"
"You did." She did not stop working. "The bindings are different, but I have it now. Two turns and a hitch against the standing part."
"I do not care if you have—" He stopped. He looked at the four knots she had already tied. He looked at them for slightly too long. "Who showed you that?"
"He did. Once."
The young crewman went a deep and immediate red and became extremely interested in the rope in front of him.
Torstein cursed in Norn, then went back to what he was doing.
***