Brihtwulf had left the city and vanished among the far trees, but neither he nor any of Æthelstan’s men had reappeared. Inside the gate the East Anglians had retreated fifty or more paces, and Father Oda was still shouting at them, but they had not dropped their shields nor lowered their banner, which showed a crudely embroidered boar’s head.

Everything was now happening either very fast or painfully slowly. It was fast on the wall’s top where we piled still more stones as vengeful West Saxons assaulted both crude barricades, but it was slow inside the city where Rumwald’s shield wall stood ready to defend the open gate against an East Anglian force that showed no desire to attack. Yet I knew it was there, on the road between the rubble and weeds of the ruined city, that this fight would be decided.

The West Saxons on the eastern reach of the wall had been reluctant to attack at first, and had given Wihtgar’s men the chance to make their stone barrier chest high. The enemy there hurled spears over the crude wall, but after the first attackers tried to clamber over the heap of stones and were met by spears thrusting from below, they were more cautious. Yet to the west the fighting was far more vicious. The pile of stones was broad there, but only knee high, and the enemy kept coming, urged on by a black-bearded man in polished mail and wearing a glittering helmet. He shouted his troops forward, though I noted he never joined them as they charged with shields held high and spears levelled. He was screaming at them to kill, to charge faster, and that was a mistake. Men hurried to cross the crude barrier and their haste made them trip on the stones and they came to our shield wall raggedly only to be met by swords, spears, and axes. Their fallen bodies made an ever-growing barrier on top of the first, a new barrier made worse by the men dying in agony who were trodden underfoot by other men trying to cross the blood-soaked obstacle.

‘The wall will hold,’ Finan told me. We were standing halfway up the steps, he was watching the fight above as I stared west towards Lundene’s higher hill.

‘The men need ale or water,’ I said. The day was getting hotter. Sweat was stinging my eyes and trickling inside my mail.

‘There’ll be ale in the guard house,’ Finan said, meaning one of the chambers inside the twin bastions. ‘I’ll have it sent up here.’

A spear struck the stone between us. The West Saxons on the western wall had seen us, and several had hurled spears, but this was the first to reach us. It skidded off the step and fell down to the road. ‘Bastards will give up soon,’ Finan said.

He was right. The men attacking us along the wall were tired of dying and had become aware that other men would do the fighting instead, and those men were appearing, heralded by blasts from horns that made us all gaze across the northern stretch of Lundene. Closest to us the land was a ruin of old walls, then it dropped to where the Weala brook flowed towards the Temes. Beyond it the land rose to Lundene’s western hill on which stood the ruins of the amphitheatre and, on the amphitheatre’s further side, the walls of the old Roman fortress. And a stream of men was coming from that fort. Many were mounted, most were on foot, but all were in mail, and even as Finan and I watched, a group of horsemen came through the gate surrounded by standard-bearers, their flags bright in the noonday sun.