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.
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."
"You gave me food when I had none. That is worth a great deal."
They sat by the hidden fire while the dark came down.
Beneath Samira's clothes, the pendant had grown warm against her skin.
Not the burn of danger. Something else. The birthmark on her wrist tingled, and she looked across the fire at the woman opposite and knew, without knowing how, what she was looking at.
"Someone is searching for you," Samira said.
Naomi went very still. "Who?"
"More than one." Samira kept her voice low. "One means you great harm. The other has been searching a long time and only means to bring you home."
Naomi stared at her. For a moment Samira thought she would reach for the quarterstaff.
"How can you know that?"
"I do not know how. I only know it is true."
Naomi looked into the fire for a long time. When she spoke again, she spoke carefully.
"And you, Samira? Are you running from someone?"
Samira thought of Torstein. Of his face at the fire, and the way his voice had broken.
"I am running from a man who would keep me safe."
"Is that so terrible?"
"When the price of safety is to stop being what I am," Samira said quietly, "yes."
Naomi did not answer. But she did not look away either.
In the gray of the morning they kicked earth over the fire, and it went out without a trace. Naomi turned north toward the mountains. Samira turned south.
"God keep you, Samira."
"And you, Naomi. Remember to eat."
Naomi laughed, and raised a hand, and walked away. Samira watched her go until the trees took her. Then she pulled the fur-lined cloak tighter and continued on toward Saddell Abbey.
***