Under a sky black with a thousand javelins the advancing British stalled. Those in the lead scrambled back and raised their shields, but those charging from behind piled into those ahead, and the mass of warriors closed up into a struggling crowd. Now Cunedda was trapped in a compressed mass, wedged so tightly he could barely breathe, and his feet were swept off the ground. He was overwhelmed by the suddenness of all this after the hours of stasis.

Then the first javelins fell. Not a pace away from Cunedda one stitched a man to the ground, where he floundered, screaming, a frothy pink fluid bubbling out of his splayed rib cage. More javelins came down, piercing heads and limbs and torsos. Battle cries were now laced with screams of pain, and the mood of the mass turned from rage and frustration to panic. But there was nowhere to go, no way to flee, or even to advance. And still the javelins fell.

With a mighty effort Cunedda managed to get his own shield raised over his head - and just as he did so a point of hardened metal pushed through splintering wood, stopping not a fraction from his right eye. He lived, he breathed. But the embedded javelin made his shield impossibly unwieldy. The javelin had bent, he found. The shaft was attached to the tip by some soft metal, and the javelin was hard even to get hold of, let alone to pull out of his shield.

As Cunedda struggled, he saw he wasn’t alone. Suddenly the ground was covered by a kind of hedge of smashed shields and protruding javelins, so entangling it was impossible to move in any direction. The javelins were meant to bend, he saw, even if they didn’t succeed in killing. He felt awed by the cunning. Cunedda had been part of a disorganised mob since the charge had begun; now that mob was tripping, falling, those who could still move fighting with each other for space and air.

There was a steady drumming, and Cunedda looked ahead. The Romans were at last advancing. The blank shield wall of the front rank of troops had broken into wedge formations, which were now pushing down the hill. The Romans carried short, heavy-looking swords with massive hilts that they drummed against their shields as they advanced. And in the last moment the Romans ran.