The mist enveloped the field, hanging low in the mounds and hummocks and concealing the faces of the Anglo-Saxon warriors as they formed their shield wall. They knew that they were outnumbered. Heavily so. But they were trained through long years of combat and believed in the shield wall. It had always been an embodiment of unwavering resistance against the imminent danger. It would hold firm. They hoped. Ealdred, a tough, seasoned warlord, stood proud at the forefront, his commanding voice cutting through the chaos of men readying themselves for the impending clash. He spoke to the men calmly. He was aware that they knew that the odds were stacked against them. He had placed his finest warriors amongst the ffyrd to stiffen the resolve of the hundreds of men who were, by rights, just farmers. It would have to do.

Across the field, the enemy's banners danced in the wind, their true strength hidden by the mist. Grimwald the Merciless, their warlord, was a name spoken of with dread, a mysterious presence whose capacity for cruelty was unmatched pranced in front of his men shouting and waving, his red hair long and blowing in the wind that had risen to blow away the morning mist.

Ealdred raised his sword with grim resolve, urging his army to stand resolute in the face of the impending storm. They beat their swords against their shields as the earth trembled beneath the thunderous steps of their enemies as they surged forward, in a mad charge their battle cries ringing across the cold, green field.

Grimwald’s men washed against the shield wall like a vast ocean wave against a cliff. The clash of steel echoed through the air, an explosion of battle and determination as the two armies met with the fury of a storm. The smell of fear, of excrement, of blood and steel was all around. The earth stained with blood, as spear and seax found their mark in unprotected flesh and the blood of the wounded and dying mixed with the mud, turning the firm turf to a quagmire of death.

The shield wall stood solid for hours, a formidable defence against the unrelenting assault of Grimwald's warriors who threw themselves in frenzied waves against Ealdred’s men. Again and again. The Saxons, brave, outnumbered, overwhelmed, were, slowly, inexorably, bloodily cut down. Man by man. The shield wall contracted inside the ring of fallen bodies and in the end they were unable to match the strength of their foes, and their defences, shields rent and shivered, spears broken, gradually crumbled under the constant assault.

Ealdred fought with a relentless determination, a man possessed by Woden himself, his blade cutting through the enemy shields and flesh with unwavering, powerful and deadly accuracy. But numbers tell and, no matter how hard Ealdred’s men fought, the outcome of the battle shifted against them, and the endless waves of the assault ground the shield wall down to little more than pebbles on a beach of death.

As the sun reached its highest point, casting a red hue over the battlefield littered with the fallen, the Saxons found themselves encircled, their numbers depleted to a bloodied, exhausted few, but still they fought. Finally though, as the sun passed its zenith and he sickened of seeing his warriors fallen in bloody mounds, Ealdred grimly called for withdrawal, his voice broken with sorrow. They retreated from the battlefield trying to keep things orderly, but the last surviving few of the ffyrd broke and fled in disarray, chased remorselessly by the victorious shouts of their adversaries, it was their certain death.

Ealdred was finally captured still fighting a retreat. But it was to no avail. Grimwald was as merciless as he was cruel. He strung up Ealdred and subjected him, in front of all the assembled troops and prisoners, to the terrible, slow death of the blood eagle and then executed those Saxon warlords who remained alive, discarding their bodies into the deep well of a nearby farmstead.

The skalds say he drank mead mixed with blood as he laughed at the fate of his defeated enemies. And then set out to harry the land and enslave the population.