the river, and fought with them; but the Christians had
the victory. And there Ordhelm, the king's thane, was slain; and
also many other king's thanes; and of the Danes there were many
slain, and that part of them that came away escaped only by
flight. As soon as they came into Essex to their fortress, and
to their ships, then gathered the remnant again in East-Anglia
and from the Northumbrians a great force before winter, and
having committed their wives and their ships and their booty to
the East-Angles, they marched on the stretch by day and night,
till they arrived at a western city in Wirheal that is called
Chester. There the army could not overtake them ere they arrived
within the work: they beset the work though, without, some two
days, took all the cattle that was thereabout, slew the men whom
they could overtake without the work, and all the corn they
either burned or consumed with their horses every evening. That
was about a twelvemonth since they first came hither over sea.

A.D. 895. Soon after that, in this year, went the army from
Wirheal into North-Wales; for they could not remain there,
because they were stripped both of the cattle and the corn that
they had acquired by plunder. When they went again out of
North-Wales with the booty they had acquired there, they marched over
Northumberland and East-Anglia, so that the king's army could not
reach them till they came into Essex eastward, on an island that
is out at sea, called Mersey. And as the army returned homeward
that had beset Exeter, they went up plundering in Sussex nigh
Chichester; but the townsmen put them to flight, and slew many
hundreds of them, and took some of their ships. Then, in the
same year, before winter, the Danes, who abode in Mersey, towed
their ships up on the Thames, and thence up the Lea. That was
about two years after that they came hither over sea.

A.D. 896. This same year wrought the aforesaid army a work by
the Lea, twenty miles above the city of London. Then, in the
summer of this year, went a large party of the citizens, and also
of other folk, and made an attack on the work of the Danes; but
they were there routed, and some four of the king's thanes were
slain. In the harvest afterward the king encamped close to the
city, whilst they reaped their corn, that the Danes might not
deprive them of the crop. Then, some day, rode the king up by
the river; and observed a place where the river might be
obstructe