More men pushed over them. This time spearpoints met them from in front, driving through wooden shields and metal rings, hurling men back into the confusion of the doorway, groaning from belly wounds. Now the long blades, sweeping in six-foot arcs, chopped down the mailed warriors like cattle before the poleaxe. For a few seconds it seemed as if the sheer weight and numbers of the first rush would break through the defenders.

But against the dim-seen menace, nerves failed. The Mercians scrambled back, those in front weaving desperately behind their shields, trying to drag their dead and wounded with them.

“So far so good,” muttered one of the Waymen.

“They’ll come again,” said Sibba.

Four more times the Mercians came on, each time more warily, trying now, as they realized the tactics and the weapons against them, to draw the blow and evade it, to leap forward before the halberdiers could recover their cumbrous weapons. The Norfolk freedmen used their advantage of numbers, two men to face each door, a man striking from each side. Slowly the casualties on both sides grew.

“They’re trying to cut through the walls,” muttered Elfstan to Sibba, still on his feet as the sky began to pale.

“Makes no difference,” replied Sibba. “They still have to climb in. As long as there’s enough of us to block each gap.”

Outside, a fair angry face stared at a bleeding exhausted one. Alfgar had come with the attackers to watch the destruction of the Waymen. He was not pleased.

“You can’t break in?” he shouted. “Against a handful of slaves?”

“We’ve lost too many good men to this handful of slaves. Eight dead, a dozen hurt and all of them badly. I’m going to do what we should have done first.”

Turning to his men, he waved a group forward to the undamaged gable end of the hall. With them they carried thorn fencing. They piled it against the wall, stamped it into a pile of thick brush. Steel struck flint, sparks dropping onto dried straw. The fire flared up.

“I want prisoners,” Alfgar said.

“If we can get them,” said the Mercian. “Anyway, now they have to come to us.”

As the smoke began to pour into the drafty hall, Sibba and Elfstan exchanged glances. They could see each other now in the growing dawn.

“They might still take you prisoner, if you went out,” said Sibba. “Hand you over to your own king. You being a thane, who knows?”

“I doubt that strongly.”

“What are we going to do?”

“What is always done. We will wait in here for every breath we can draw, until the smoke is thickest. Then we will run out and hope one or two of us may get away in the confusion.”