Still more fires showed in the hilly land to the north of us. Mynydd Baddon lay like an offshore island to those hills, and was separated from them by a high grassy saddle. I had half thought we might cross that high valley in the night, climb to the ridge beyond and make our way across the hills towards Corinium; so, before dusk, I sent Issa and a score of men to reconnoitre the route, but they returned to say there were mounted Saxon scouts all across the ridge beyond the saddle. I was still tempted to try and escape northwards, but I knew the Saxon horsemen would see us and that by dawn we would have their whole warband on our heels. I worried about the choice till deep into the night, then picked the lesser of the two evils: we would stay on Mynydd Baddon.

To the Saxons we must have appeared a formidable army. I now commanded two hundred and sixty-eight men and the enemy were not to know that fewer than a hundred of those were prime spearmen. Forty of the remainder were the city levy, thirty-six were battle-hardened warriors who had guarded Caer Cadarn or Durnovaria’s palace, though most of those three dozen men were old and slow now, while a hundred and ten were unblooded youngsters. My seventy experienced spearmen and Argante’s twelve Blackshields were among the best warriors in Britain, and though I did not doubt that the thirty-six veterans would be useful and that the youngsters might well prove formidable, it was still a pitifully small force with which to protect our hundred and fourteen women and seventy-nine children. But at least we had plenty of food and water, for we possessed the seven precious wagons and there were three springs on Mynydd Baddon’s flanks.

By nightfall on that first day we had counted the enemy. There were about three hundred and sixty Saxons in the valley and at least another eighty on the land to the north. That was enough spearmen to keep us penned on Mynydd Baddon, but probably not enough to assault us. Each of the flat and treeless summit’s three sides was three hundred paces in length, making a total that was far too great for my small numbers to defend, but if the enemy did attack we would see them coming from a long way off and I would have time to move spearmen to face their assault. I reckoned that even if they made two or three simultaneous assaults I could still hold, for the Saxons would have a terrible steep slope to climb and my men would be fresh, but if the enemy numbers increased then I knew I must be overwhelmed. My prayer was that these Saxons were nothing more than a strong foraging band, and once they had stripped Aquae Sulis and its river valley of whatever food they could find they would go back north to rejoin Aelle and Cerdic.