From “Pirates of the Heart” – Brenda Niskala

AT FIRST, the thought of owning another person did not sit well with Vaino.

And what if this woman was being nice to him just to get ahead? Of course she was. That is what slaves do. They ingratiate themselves. Or they become bitter. Or silent and cunning. No, Vaino thought. They must always be silent and cunning. To stay alive. And here was Tasya, with her big teeth, with her lips so plump, her yellow hair and green eyes, and her almost cruel way of teasing him.

He thought of Leena, shivering with fever on the hide blanket. Leena, dying in that awful place. She must be dead now, in spite of his guard and new friend Tuomi’s gift of sight. Vaino did not believe in such things. Best to face the truth. Poor Leena, her spirit, so far from the trees of the ancestors., It would never settle down. Her spirit would wander in that place, the slave pit in the harbour of Gotland, homeless, until he came to find her bones. Leena would not want him to be alone on this long journey. Leena would want him to be with someone. Maybe not a wife. No one could replace her, his partner, his home mate. But she would not want him to mourn. She would want him to live.

He tilted his chin up and to the right a bit, to that place where he could sometimes feel the presence of the spirits as they passed. But Leena was not there. How could she be? Still, he tilted his head and asked the departed grandparents to intercede on his behalf, to forgive him his weakness in not being there to help her, his weakness in leaving her to die. As he had for almost every day since the ship set off for the east, he thought through every moment of his captivity since leaving Gotland.

Was there a moment when he could have turned back, when he could have jumped ship, escaped, and returned to put her to rest? Maybe when they were trading with the Slavs. The camp was a temporary trading place, shaped like a triangle, with the tent forming the narrow peak opening to the waterside. Vaino should have run then, instead of going into that smoky chum, that tent so like the home of his little cousin of the Sami, but so much larger. But run where? The river meandered between low banks, and beyond only miles of flatland, tall grasses, and then nothing more as far as the eye could see. That was the problem. The Norse and the Khanty and everyone else on those plains would see him for hours, could simply ride out after a leisurely visit, pick him up, then put him in the slave tent. Sundvold, the Pretender, and his crew were not looking for grizzled old slaves like him at this stop. Not for the eastern markets.