A/N: Thank you, Uruviele and yayawhynot89, for your reviews!

Chapter IX: Cyneric’s Return
1071 A.D., East Anglia

Since the harrowing Norman attack the summer before, Hereward made his camp particularly watchful. He ordered more men to patrol the wetlands during the day and forbade campfires at night, except in cases of extreme cold. He knew, as did every clever man, that the success of the Ely rebellion was halfway due to its concealment. Another raid like that and the entire camp may be decimated.

It was springtime, so the fens began their cyclical stink again. Eels were roasted on spits, as were hares and squirrels. The men and women who survived last year were downtrodden until a new group of spearmen came into the mists one fine morning and announced they were from Northumbria, a place that had been nearly destroyed by the Bastard’s cruel hand.

When Ragnhildr heard, she remembered the blacksmith who fashioned her spear. She remembered his son, little Harold. She hardly knew why she remembered it, after all of these years, but she fell asleep sometimes wondering if they were still alive or if Harold was old enough to carry a weapon of his own, as he always dreamed.

A stranger came one spring day, when Ragnhildr was bent over in the forest, hand ripping soft moss from the earth. When she rose, she saw a great stir in the camp yonder, and so she hiked up her tunic and watched as Hereward approached with a foreign man. Some of the men looked distrustfully on the newcomer, while the women raised fine brows and blushed.

When she realized who the man was, she knew he was no stranger.

“Companions, I beg you to show hospitality to a friend of mine. He once served the King of the Danes,” Hereward said, followed by a hiss of disapproval for the sneaky king, “but now he wishes to help us in our times of deep despair. He brought with him a ship called the Wyvern and has forthright made an oath to serve our needs until I dismiss him. I figure one Dane pirate bastard is as good as any, but he’s a special one. This is Cyneric Sigólfsson.” Hereward nodded in Cyneric’s direction with a wide grin.

Cyneric, with his usual magnetism, bowed humbly to the Saxons, though Ragnhildr knew he was about as humble as the Pope himself. She sneered when she saw him at first, but it also gave her a small warmth to know he was on their side. He was an experienced man. Why, she thought suddenly, he’s been harassing poor folk since I was a child! I grew up listening to my father grumble about this man. Bastard outlaw. No better or worse than any of us, though, I suppose.

“I’ll cherish any hospitality you offer me,” he said wolfishly. He had not changed. Not in the five years since Ragnhildr saw him last. Wolfish and foreign. “She’s a magnificent lady, my ship, and we can use her to patrol the Norman sons-of-bitches. Why, I was a pirate before this, so I know how you all work, looting and fighting all day. We’ll have a most beneficial relationship.”

He smiled with a sly grin; if the people knew the stories of him, of how devilish and brutish he was, they would have cowered. Instead, they clapped and cheered. They were stirred.

Later that day, while Ragnhildr was planting parsley in a small garden away from the camp, she saw a shadow. As she stood up and dusted the dirt from her skirt, she noticed it was Cyneric. He had known her in all stages of her life: firstly, he came to her as a maiden during Raedmund’s wedding feast, then while she was married to the ealdorman of Mercia, and finally, now, after she had felt death countless times. Because of this, she always understood that small intimacy they shared. Her heart swelled and, unwillingly, she let out a small cry, not knowing if she was fearful or merely surprised to see him.

And he was surprised to see her as well, though he hid it. “I see you took my advice,” he said wisely.

Ragnhildr sighed and wiped sweat from her brow. “I don’t know what you’re speaking of, Dane.”

He was off-put by her cold tongue. “Don’t pretend you don’t remember. I stake you never forgot what I said or how I said it or the way I looked at you when I did so. If you disregarded it, as you probably have with other advice, you wouldn’t look the way you do.”

She was hurt, but she could play his game. “Perhaps you should have stopped pirating long ago. You wouldn’t have so many wrinkles.” She still did not know what he was getting at, nor did she care; she wanted to tend to her parsley garden and sleep beside Nagesa and Wulfgar like any other night, not exchange words with a burdensome man. There was once a time she would have relished in flirtatious games and the touch of lovers, but since Wihtgar was murdered, she never looked upon a man with lust. It would seem to her almost blasphemous.

“Words as sharp as blades, little one,” he said, but without warmth. She was smaller than him--much smaller, though he owned that desperate leanness that Wihtgar once possessed. There were indeed wrinkles around his broad mouth and lining his eyes. He was still gruff and worldly and handsome. From what Ragnhildr could estimate, he was nearing forty-two. “You took my advice about learning to fight. You look battle-tired; I know that look. Have you ever killed a man?”

She sneered, “Several, lord pirate.”

“And how did you find yourself here? Last I knew, you were with that bastard husband in Mercia, all the way on the opposite side of this little isle,” he said, his blue eyes piercing. “Did the Normans come there, too?”

Ragnhildr was tired. “Why are you here?” She returned to her planting, as if Cyneric was less important than the small seedlings.

“I beg you, lady, believe me what I say I’m here to help my friend Hereward,” he said.

But he was not earnest, and Ragnhildr sensed that. “I’ve fought men and I’ve killed men and I’ve fucked men and I know when men are lying. Why are you truly here? Is there no more sea-plunder for your gain? Have you exhausted yourself killing for those bone torques you wear? Or is it for profit?” She noticed he visibly stiffened when she said the final part. “Ah, for profit then. You must have gotten word that the Normans are the only rich things in England anymore, God damn them.”

Cyneric frowned, his brows together as if he was concerned. “That might be part of it,” he conceded. Without looking up from the dirt, Ragnhildr knew it hurt his pride to admit that. “But there is real adventure here. And I’m not opposed to helping your resistance. It’s famed throughout England after all. Perhaps I was bored.”

“Perhaps,” she said icily.

The more he thought about her cruel, mocking words, the more heated he grew. Finally, he said, “When I first met you, you were a Saxon noblewoman. You were so young and unburdened and free. Then you were one of the most powerful women in England. And here you are, worn by war and defeat,” he kicked a mound of dirt she had been shaping with her hands, “planting damn gardens. Look at yourself.”

She clenched her fists. The last miserable thing I need is a man like this ridiculing me. How dare he. There was a mess of dirt before her, a blemish on her neat garden she tended to fondly, to get her mind off things. Slowly, calmly, she rose and looked at him straight in the face. If she were younger, she would not have been capable of staring into his intense eyes. But she did, and told him with a low, clear voice, “When you first met me, lord Dane, I had a husband, a mother, a father, and two brothers. I still had my left eye and this optimism and naivety about England’s future. I stand before you without any of those things. I’m tired.” She sighed. “I’m so tired, and in the long years you’ve spent bullying and threatening poor folk for sport, I’ve been holding to this God-forsaken hope like everyone else in Hereward’s camp. The least you could do is leave us to do that. Leave me to my garden. It’s one of the few things I have left.”

Before she could see the guilt and sorrow on the old Dane’s face, she kneeled before her garden again. Her hands worked to replant the seeds he had kicked. As he walked away, haunted by her words, she packed the dirt tight together, and then moved on to the next planting. As if nothing could bother her any longer.