Cerdic outnumbered us, but he could not outflank us to the north for the heavy horsemen were there and he did not want to throw his men uphill against their charge, and so he sent men to outflank us to the south, but Sagramor anticipated him and led his spearmen into that gap. I remember hearing that clash of shields. Blood had filled my right boot so that it squelched whenever I put weight on it, my skull was a throbbing thing of pain and my mouth fixed in a snarl. The man who had taken my place in the front rank would not yield it back to me. ‘They’re giving, Lord,’ he shouted at me, ‘they’re giving!’ And sure enough the enemy’s pressure was weakening. They were not defeated, just retreating, and suddenly an enemy shout called them back and they gave a last spear lunge or axe stroke and backed hard away. We did not follow. We were too bloody, too battered and too tired to pursue, and we were obstructed by the pile of bodies that mark the tide’s edge of a spear and shield battle. Some in that pile were dead, others stirred in agony and pleaded for death.

Cerdic had pulled his men back to make a new shield wall, one big enough to break through to Aelle’s men, now cut off from safety by Sagramor’s troops who had filled most of the gap between my men and the river. I learned later that Aelle’s men were being pushed back against the river by Tewdric’s spearmen, and Arthur left just enough men to keep those Saxons trapped and sent the rest to reinforce Sagramor.

My helmet had a dent across its left side and a split at the base of the dent that went clean through the iron and the leather liner. When I eased the helmet off it tugged at the blood clotting in my hair. I gingerly felt my scalp, but sensed no splintered bone, only a bruise and a pulsing pain. There was a ragged wound on my left forearm, my chest was bruised and my right ankle was still bleeding. Issa was limping, but claimed it was nothing but a graze. Niall, the leader of the Blackshields, was dead. A spear had spitted his breastplate and he lay on his back, the spear jutting skyward, with his open mouth brimming with blood. Eachern had lost an eye. He padded the open socket with a scrap of rag that he tied round his scalp, then jammed the helmet over the crude bandage and swore to revenge the eye a hundredfold.