As the Danes took their time readying themselves, Alan’s men lounged about in their positions, eating a cold meal of dried beef jerky, bread and cheese washed down with water from the small skin that each man carried as part of his equipment.
Eventually, at about two in the afternoon, the Danes approached. Alan estimated their numbers at about 800, with probably about another 50 holding the ships and village. Alan turned and spoke to his servant Leof, who leaped onto a horse and with two guards galloped away with instructions to be given to Alan’s ships standing off the coast to the west.
The small Danish army slowly moved en masse and on foot, with no apparent formation, towards the large band of Englishmen. The Englishmen rose and took their places in line, chatting to each other and making encouraging comments to bolster themselves and their compatriots. Shoulders were slapped and arms grasped. Wagers were made between men as to who would kill the most Danes, while the men tried to ignore the empty feeling of fear in their stomachs.
The Danes paused close to the first line of defensive pits, about 150 paces from the English line. The pits were arrayed over a depth of about 100 paces and, although carefully planned, seemed haphazard and inconsequential. The Danes would soon learn otherwise.
A tall bearded man in a gilded helmet which shone brilliantly in the sun stepped clear in front of the Danes, turned and began to shout exhortations to his men, waving his arms.
“Kill him!” Alan quietly instructed Owain the Welsh master-bowman who stood at his side. Owain already had an arrow in hand and with a single fluid movement notched the arrow, raised the bow and loosed. A moment later the bodkin-tipped arrow smashed into the back of the Dane between the shoulders, pierced the chain-mail byrnie and threw the man forward onto his face with more than two feet of arrow showing between his shoulder-blades.
After a moment of blank stupefaction the Danes gave a wild hoarse battle-cry and leaped forward. Alan turned first to the archers on the west flank, and then those on the east flank, in each case raising a clenched fist above his head in a pumping motion. No instructions were yet given to the men hiding in the forest to the east. Twenty longbowmen began to rain a hail of arrows into the Danes, each delivering an aimed arrow every four or five seconds. At such short range the trajectory was flat and more than half of the arrows struck shields. When they did not, the sheer power of the longbow drove the bodkin-tipped armour-piercing arrow through whatever it hit, be it chain-mail, helmet or flesh.
Danes were falling, disrupting those who followed behind. Then the Danes reached the main part of the seemingly useless defensive pits. Seeing them, the men skirted around them, but they were slowed- and more particularly were forced into three narrow channels. This made the job of the archers easier. They simply had to select a target from the mass of armoured men. From their advanced positions, with the natural protection offered by the mudflat, the archers on the right flank were now able to mainly avoid the shields, smashing arrows into the sides of the foe, while those on the left flank still had to carefully chose their target.
Alan faced the men hidden in the woods to the east and again raised a fist, punching the sky. Twenty more archers began to rain death on the Danes from the trees behind them, arrows slamming into their undefended backs. Before they reached the row of defensive pits closest to the English already more than 100 Danes lay dead, riddled with the longbow cloth-yard arrows.
The Danes had been channeled by the seemingly-innocuous pits into three areas each 25 paces wide, jostling each other and slowing their progress. As the first of the Danes burst out of the bottle-necks and surged forward, the 10 archers behind the shield-wall joined the fray, shooting point-blank into the faces and throats of the Danes running towards them. Each loosed 4 or 5 arrows at close range into the Danes, the arrows smashing through armour and flesh. Men dropped, some quietly and others screaming with pain from chest or belly wounds.
The English were deployed in chevron-shaped formations in front of each of the three openings in the line of pits. The Danes burst out of the confined areas, spreading slightly as they charged. Danes fell left and right from the efforts of the archers and were trampled underfoot by those who followed. Alan could see behind his own line youths of ten or so years of age trundling hand-carts containing sheaves of arrows to replenish the supplies of the bowmen to the rear of the English line, as they loosed arrow after arrow, each sheaf of twelve taking less than a minute to use.
The men in the English shield-wall were chanting the ancient Saxon battle-cry. “Out! Out! Out!” They hammered their spears or sword-hilts against their shields. The Danes roared their own battle cries as they closed the English line. Then the front ranks of the Danes struck the English shield-wall like three hammer-blows.
Usually the Danes used their own projectiles when close to the enemy, normally small throwing axes, but this time they were so keen to close with the enemy that they passed up the opportunity to pause and throw. The English swordsmen in the front rank, many experiencing their first taste of battle, quailed as the screaming Danes closed with their long hair flying, mouths open screaming battle-cries or death-cries, faces bright red from the exertion of running on soft ground in full armour.
The battle-chant, the press of men at each shoulder and the feel of the man close behind, the provision of mutual protection and support kept the English line together. When the Danes crashed into the shield-wall they were pushed back as the English warriors bent slightly and shoved hard just as the Danes hit. In the close confines of the battle, where there was hardly space to swing an axe or long-sword, the English swordsmen began to use their shorter one-handed swords to effect, stabbing towards the bellies of the invaders, facing them as they pushed forward and with the shield on their left arm protecting them from the blows of the Danes.
The use of the defensive pits and the positioning of the English shield-wall meant that, while the Danes outnumbered the English two to one overall, at the shield-wall there were two Englishmen for each Dane, with a large pack of other invaders pushing forward trying to get a place. While it was hot work for the English swordsmen in the front rank, they held a two to one advantage on the shield-wall and a spear stabbing over each shoulder trying to impale the Danes if they dropped their guard for a moment, the English held and the Danish losses mounted quickly. In the press the dead, English and Dane alike, found it difficult to fall, being supported upright by the bodies of the living. Men pushed and shoved, shouted, screamed, thrust and slashed with weapons. Blood flew from strokes that hit their target, blood and guts from those who had been eviscerated made the ground slippery and the wounded who did fall to the ground were trampled as the shield-wall surged back and forth.
Crammed together the Danish axe-men had no room to wield their weapons, and the swordsmen were restricted to bashing with their shields and trying to stab their opponent in the guts as any attempt at an overhand stroke would most likely lop off the head of the compatriot standing next to him. The fighting style of the Norsemen, trained for individual and not collective combat, counted against them. Alan had specifically trained the Englishmen, including the fyrdmen, to fight in a shield-wall.
At Hastings the English had learned from the Normans that combat required men to work together in mutually supporting groups and that the importance of individual ability epitomised by the Berserker was largely a thing of the past. While being faced by a huge man wielding a massive battleaxe in both hands, hewing through his opponents like so much wood, slicing men and horses asunder, was enough to make even a brave man empty his bowels, properly executed coordinated close-combat made the two-handed axe almost redundant. If the axe-men were not killed by archers when they stepped forward from their own shield-wall, and the opposing swordsmen kept out of their reach but engaged their attention, the supporting spearmen and bowmen would account for them. The local English fyrdmen had been taught well over the last two years.