All the day we waited and watched, anxious and restless, but no attack came on us here, and the smoke of the camp grew no thinner at Norton. A few Norsemen rode up to us from Watchet, and they said that no move was on hand yet, so far as they could tell. And at last, as the sun was setting, and shone level on the slope of the Poldens, above which the Tor of Glastonbury sent a waving wreath of smoke into the air to bid Wessex gather against the ancient foe, we saw the long line of sparkling helms and spear points as our host marched from hill to causeway to the bridge that spans the Parrett. Ina would hold the heights above Norton before morning.
But that made it the more needful that we should bide here till we were sent for, seeing that we guarded the flank of our advance; and hard it was to sit still and do it, with a battle pending yonder. It was a long night to us, and hungry.
Early in the next morning there was heavy smoke on these hills that told of burning on the line of our march, and there was more away toward the far Blackdown hills, as if there were trouble beyond Tone. And in the afternoon there fell a strange stillness on the woods round us, and I wondered. There was never a buzzard or kite, raven or crow, left in all the woodland, and then I minded that overhead lately the birds of prey had all flown in one direction, and that toward where Norton lay.
It was the cry of the kite and the voice of the songbirds that I missed. The birds of prey had gone, and in the cover their little quarry cowered in fear of the shadow of the broad wings which had crossed them so often. Even now two of the great sea eagles were sailing inland, and from these strange signs we knew for certain that yonder a battlefield was spread for them, where Saxon and Welsh strove for mastery in the fair valley. But we must pace the hill crest, silent and moody, waiting for some sign that might tell us of victory.
That came at last in the late afternoon. Slowly there gathered, over the trees where Norton was, a haze that thickened into a smoke, and that grew into heavy dun clouds which rose and drifted even to the hilltops, for Norton was burning, and by that token we knew that Ina was victor.
Presently there were flying men of the Welsh who could be seen on the open hillsides, and some few came even up to this camp, and we took them, and from them heard how the battle had gone. It had been a terrible battle, from their account, but they knew little more than that, and that they were beaten. I suppose that Ina thought it best for us to hold this camp for the night, for here we bided, chafing somewhat; and but for what we took from the Welsh, hungry, until early morning. Then at last a mounted messenger came to us, and we went to Norton.
There, indeed, was high praise waiting for us from Ina, for it seemed that our work had checked the advance of Gerent, and had given time for full gathering of the levies before he was over the border. But now I learnt that there was another Welsh army in the field, beyond the Tone River, and until we heard how it fared with the Dorset levies in that direction it was doubtful if we might hold that all was well yet. Gerent had not set everything on this one attack, but had also marched on Langport across the Blackdown hills. Thither Nunna had led what men he could be spared, and was to meet the Dorset levies, whose ealdorman, Sigebald, had sent word to Glastonbury, soon after I left there, to tell of this attack.
In the late evening there were beacon fires on the Blackdown hills, and a great one on the camp at Neroche which crowns and guards the hills in that direction. And so presently through the dusk one rode into Norton with word of the greatest battle that Wessex had fought since men could remember, for Nunna had met the foe on the way to Langport, and at last, after a mighty struggle which had long seemed doubtful, had swept them back across the hills whence they came, in full flight homeward. So there was full victory for Wessex, but we had to pay a heavy price therefor. Nunna had fallen in the hour of triumph, and Sigebald, the ealdorman, was lost to Dorset also.
Presently we laid Nunna in his mound on the Blackdown hills where he had fallen. There he bides as the foremost of Saxon leaders in the new land we had won, and I do not think that it is an unfitting place for such a one as he. It is certain that so long as a Wessex man who minds the deeds of his fathers is left the name of Nunna will be held in honour with that of the king; his kinsman.