So we dismounted and watched the slow fall of the water, and we planned what we would do presently; until at last we splashed through the muddy ford, and rode on through dense forest land until the great camp rose above us, a full thousand feet skyward, and we saw the glow of the watch fires of those who held it.  It seemed almost impossible to scale this hill as we looked on its slope in the darkness, but we reached its foot where the hill is steepest, and held on northward yet, until we came to where there is a long steady rise up to the very gate of the earthworks.

Now there should have been an outpost halfway along this slope toward the camp, for whatever tribe of the Britons made the stronghold had not forgotten to raise a little fort for one.  But we were in luck, for this outpost was not held, and we rode past it, and knew that there was every chance now of our fairly surprising the camp.  The first grey of dawn was coming when I passed the word to the men to close up, and told them what we were to do.

“We charge through the earthworks, for there is no barrier across the gate, and spread out across the camp with all the noise we can.  Follow a flight for no long distance beyond the earthworks, but scatter the Welsh.”

So we rode on steadily until we were but a bow shot from the trench, and yet no alarm was raised, for the foe watched hardly at all, deeming that no Saxon force would think of crossing where we crossed the river, or of coming on them from the north at all.

Then Thorgils and I and Erpwald rode forward, and I gave the word to charge, and up the long smooth slope we went at the gallop, with a heavy thunder of hoofs on the firm turf of the ancient track.  And that thunder was the first sign that the Welsh knew of our coming.

I saw one come to the gateway and look, and then with a wild howl throw himself into the outer ditch for safety, and the camp roared with the alarm, and the dim white figures flocked to the rampart, and through a storm of ill-aimed arrows we rode through the unguarded gate and were on them.

“Ahoy!—­Out, out!—­Holy Cross!”

The war shouts of Norseman and South Saxon and Wessex men were in startling medley together here, and that terrified the Welsh yet more.  It must have seemed to them that the Norsemen had called unheard of allies to their help.  There was no order or rallying power among them.

We three were first through the gateway, and then we were riding across the camp with levelled spears, over men and through the fires, and a panic fell on the foe, so that without waiting to see what our numbers were, in headlong terror they fled from the charge over the ramparts and into the forests in the valleys on either side beyond whence we came.  I had no fear of their rallying thence to any effect, for it would take them all their time to find their leaders in the combes and the thick undergrowth that clothed their sides.  Once out of the camp, too, they could not see into it to tell how few we were.