Just clouds.
And then I saw Osric's men slanting away to the right. We were in a fold of the hills and they were going around the right-hand hill and, as we reached the saddle between the two low slopes, I saw the level ground and there, ahead of me, was the enemy.
I love the Danes. There are no better men to fight with, drink with, laugh with or live with. Yet that day, as on so many others of my life, they were the enemy and they waited for me in a gigantic shield wall arrayed across the down. There were thousands of Danes, Spear-Danes and Sword-Danes, Danes who had come to make this land theirs, and we had come to keep it ours.
'God give us strength,' Father Pyrlig said when he saw the enemy who had begun shouting as we appeared. They clashed spears and swords against limewood shields, making a thunder on the hilltop.
The ancient fort was the right wing of their army, and men were thick on the green turf walls. Many of those men had black shields and above them was a black banner, so that was where Guthrum was, while their left wing, which faced our right, was strung out on the open down and it was there I could see a triangular banner, supported by a small cross-staff, showing a white horse. So Svein commanded their left, while to the Danish right, our left, the escarpment dropped to the river plains. It was a steep drop, a tumbling hill. We could not hope to outflank the Danes on that side, for no one could fight on such a slope. We had to attack straight ahead, directly into the shield wall and against the earthen ramparts and onto the spears and the swords and the war axes of our outnumbering enemy.
I looked for Ragnar's eagle-wing banner and thought I saw it in the fort, but it was hard to be certain, for every crew of Danes flew their standard, and the small flags were crowded together and the rain had started to fall again, obscuring the symbols, but off to my right, outside the fort and close to the bigger standard of the white horse, was a Saxon flag. It was a green flag with an eagle and a cross, which meant Wulfhere was there with that part of the Wiltunscir fyrd which had followed him. There were other Saxon banners in the enemy horde. Not many, maybe a score, and I guessed that the Danes had brought men from Mercia to fight for them. All the Saxon banners were in the open ground, none was inside the fort.
We were still a long way apart, much farther than a man could shoot an arrow, and none of us could hear what the Danes were shouting. Osric's men were making our right wing as Wiglaf led his Sumorsaete fyrd off to the left. We were making a line to oppose their line, but ours would inevitably be shorter. The odds were not quite two Danes to one Saxon, but it was close.
'God help us,' Pyrlig said, touching his crucifix.
Alfred summoned his commanders, gathering them under the rain-sodden banner of the dragon.
The Danish thunder went on, the clattering of thousands of weapons against shields, as the king asked his army's leaders for advice.
Amulf of Suth Seaxa, a wiry man with a short beard and a perpetual scowl, advised attack. 'Just attack,' he said, waving at the fort. 'We'll lose some men on the walls, but we'll lose men anyway.'
'We'll lose a lot of men,' my cousin, Ethelred warned. He only led a small band, but his status as the son of a Mercian ealdorman meant he had to be included in Alfred's council of war.
'We do better defending,' Osric growled. 'Give a man land to defend and he stands, so let the bastards come to us.' Harald nodded agreement.
Alfred cast a courteous eye on Wiglaf of Sumorsaete who looked surprised to be consulted. 'We shall do our duty, lord,' he said, 'do our duty whatever you decide.'
Leofric and I were present, but the king did not invite our opinion so we kept silent.
Alfred gazed at the enemy, then turned back to us.
'In my experience,' he said, 'the enemy expect something of us.' He spoke pedantically, in the same tone he used when he was discussing theology with his priests. 'They want us to do certain things.
What are those things?'
Wiglaf shrugged, while Amulf and Osric looked bemused. They had both expected something fiercer from Alfred. Battle, for most of us, was a hammering rage, nothing clever, a killing orgy, but Alfred saw it as a competition of wisdom, or perhaps as a game of tall that took cleverness to win. That, I am sure, was how he saw our two armies, as tall pieces on their chequered board.
'Well?' he asked.
'They expect us to attack!' Osric said uncertainly.
'They expect us to attack Wulfhere,' I said.
Alfred rewarded me with a smile. 'Why Wulfhere?'
'Because he's a traitor and a bastard and a piece of whore-begotten goat-shit,' I said.
'Because we do not believe,' Alfred corrected me, 'that Wulfhere's men will fight with the same passion as the Danes. And we're right, they won't. His men will pull hack from killing fellow Saxons.'
'But Svein is there,' I said.
'Which tells us?' he asked.
The others stared at him. He knew the answer, but he could never resist being a teacher, and so he waited for a response.
'It tells us,' I supplied it again, 'that they want us to attack their left, but they don't want their left to break. That's why Svein is there. He'll hold us and they'll launch an assault out of the fort to hit the flank of our attack. That breaks the right of our army and then the whole damned lot come and kill the rest of us.'
Alfred did not respond, but looked worried, suggesting that he agreed with me. The other men turned and looked at the Danes, as if some magical answer might suggest itself, but none did.
'So do as Lord Amulf suggests,' Harald said, 'attack the fort.'
'The walls are steep,' Wiglaf warned. The Ealdorman of Sumorsaete was a man of sunny disposition, frequent laughter and casual generosity, but now, with his men arrayed opposite the fort's green ramparts, he was downcast.
