'Back!' Alfred called.
It was not till we retreated to where we had begun the fight that I realised the disaster on our right.
We had been the centre of Alfred's army, but now we were its right wing, and what had been our strong right flank was splintered chaos. Many of Osric's men had retreated to where the women and horses waited, and they made a shield wall there which served to protect them, but most of the fyrd had fled farther east and was being carved into smaller and smaller groups.
Svein at last hauled his men back from the pursuit, but by then nearly all our right wing was gone.
Many of those men lived, but they had been driven from the field and would be reluctant to come back and take more punishment. Osric himself had survived, and he brought the two hundred men who had retreated to the women and horses back to Alfred, but that was all he had left. Svein formed his men again, facing us, and I could see him haranguing them.
'They're coming for us,' I said.
'God will protect us,' Pyrlig said. He had blood on his face. A sword or axe had pierced his helmet and cut open his scalp so that blood was crusted thick on his left cheek.
'Where was your shield?' I demanded of Æthelwold.
'I've got it,' he said. He looked pale and frightened.
'You're supposed to protect Pyrlig's head,' I snarled at him.
'It's nothing,' Pyrlig tried to calm my anger.
Æthelwold looked as if he would protest, then suddenly jerked forward and vomited. I turned away from him. I was angry, but I was also disappointed. The bowel-loosening fear was gone, but the fighting had seemed half-hearted and ineffective. We had seen off the Danes who had attacked us, but we had not hurt them so badly that they would abandon the fight. I wanted to feel the battle-rage, the screaming joy of killing, and instead all seemed ponderous and difficult.
I had looked for Ragnar during the fight, fearing having to fight my friend, and when the Danes had gone back to the fort I saw he had been engaged further down the line. I could see him now, on the rampart, staring at us, then I looked right, expecting to see Svein lead his men in an assault on us, but instead I saw Svein galloping to the fort and I suspected he went to demand reinforcements from Guthrum.
The battle was less than an hour old, yet now it paused. Some women brought us water and mouldy bread while the wounded sought what help they could find. I wrapped a rag around Eadric's left arm where an axe blade had gone through the leather of his sleeve.
'It was aimed at you, lord,' he said, grinning at me toothlessly.
I tied the rag into place. 'Does it hurt?'
'Bit of an ache,' he said, 'but not bad. Not bad.' He flexed his arm, found it worked and picked up his shield.
I looked again at Svein's men, but they seemed in no hurry to resume their attack. I saw a man tip a skin of water or ale to his mouth. Just ahead of us, among the line of dead, a man suddenly sat up.
He was Danish and had plaited black hair that had been tied in knots and decorated with ribbons. I had thought he was dead, but he sat up and stared at us with a look of indignation and then, seemingly, yawned. He was looking straight at me, his mouth open, and then a flood of blood rimmed and spilled over his lower lip to soak his beard. His eyes rolled white and he fell backwards.
Svein's men were still not moving. There were some eight hundred of them arrayed in their line.
They were still the left wing of Guthrum's army, but that wing was much smaller now that it had been shorn of Wulfhere's men, and so I turned and pushed through our ranks to find Alfred.
'Lord!' I called, getting his attention. 'Attack those men!' I pointed to Svein's troops. They were a good two hundred paces from the fort and, for the moment at least, without their leader because Svein was still inside the ramparts. Alfred looked down on me from his saddle and I urged him to attack with every man in the centre division of our army. The Danes had the escarpment at their back and I reckoned we could tip them down that treacherous slope.
Alfred listened to me, looked at Svein's men, then shook his head dumbly. Beocca was on his knees, hands spread wide and face screwed tight in an intensity of prayer.
'We can drive them off, lord,' I insisted.
'They'll come from the fort,' Alfred said, meaning that Guthrum's Danes would come to help Svein's men. Some would, but I doubted enough would come.
'But we want them out of the fort,' I insisted. 'They're easier to kill in open ground, lord.'
Alfred just shook his head again. I think, at that moment, he was almost paralysed by the fear of doing the wrong thing, and so he chose to do nothing. He wore a plain helmet with a nasal, no other protection for his face, and he looked sickly pale. He could not see an obvious opportunity, and so he would let the enemy make the next decision.
It was Svein who made it. He brought more Danes out of the fort, three or four hundred of them.
Most of Guthrum's men stayed behind the ramparts, but those men who had made the first attack on Alfred's bodyguard now streamed onto the open downland where they joined Svein's troops and made their shield wall. I could see Ragnar's banner among them.
'They're going to attack, aren't they?' Pyrlig said. The rain had washed much of the blood from his face, but the split in his helmet looked gory. 'I'm all right,' he said, seeing me glance at the damage, 'I've had worse from a row with the wife. But those bastards are coming, aren't they? They want to keep killing us from our right.'
'We can beat them, lord,' I called back to Alfred. 'Put all our men against them. All of then!'
He seemed not to hear.
'Bring Wiglaf's fyrd across, lord!' I appealed to him.
'We can't move Wiglaf,' he said indignantly.
He feared that if he moved the Sumorsaete fyrd from its place in front of the fort then Guthrum would lead all his men out to assault our left flank, but I knew Guthrum was far too cautious to do any such thing. He felt safe behind the turf ramparts and he wanted to stay safe while Svein won the battle for him. Guthrum would not move until our army was broken, then he would launch an assault. But Alfred would not listen. He was a clever man, perhaps as clever as any man born, but he did not understand battle. He did not understand that battle is not just about numbers, it is not about moving tall pieces, and it is not even about who has the advantage in ground, but about passion and madness and a screaming, ungovernable rage.
And so far I had felt none of those things. We in Alfred's household troops had fought well enough, but we had merely defended ourselves. We had not carried slaughter to the enemy, and it is only when you attack that you win. Now, it seemed, we were to defend ourselves again, and Alfred stirred himself to order me and my men to the right of his line.
'Leave the standards with me,' he said, 'and make sure our flank is safe.'
There was honour in that. The right end of the line was where the enemy might try to wrap around us and Alfred needed good men to hold that open flank, and so we formed a tight knot there. Far off across the down I could see the remnants of Osric's fyrd. They were watching us. Some of them, I thought, would return if they thought we were winning, but for the moment they were too full of fear to rejoin Alfred's army.