It was in the hut of a charcoal-burner in the heart of the forests of Wiltshire.

Upon reaching the hut, and showing to the man the king's signet-ring, which when leaving the standard he had told him would be the signal that any who might come for it were sent by him, the man produced the standard from the thatch of his cottage, in which it was deeply buried, and hearing that it was again to be unfurled called his two stalwart sons from their work and at once set out with Edmund and Egbert to join the army.
Easter came and went, but the preparations were not yet completed.

A vast supply of arms was needed, and while the smiths laboured at their work Edmund and Egbert drilled the fighting men who had assembled, in the tactics which had on a small scale proved so effective.

The wedge shape was retained, and Edmund's own band claimed the honour of forming the apex, but it had now swollen until it contained a thousand men, and as it moved in a solid body, with its thick edge of spears outward, the king felt confident that it would be able to break through the strongest line of the Danes.
From morning till night Edmund and Egbert, assisted by the thanes of Somerset who had gathered there, drilled the men and taught them to rally rapidly from scattered order into solid formation.

Unaccustomed to regular tactics the ease and rapidity with which these movements came to be carried out at the notes of Edmund's bugle seemed to all to be little less than miraculous, and they awaited with confidence and eagerness their meeting with the Danes on the field.
At the end of April messengers were sent out bidding the Saxons hold themselves in readiness, and on the 6th of May Alfred moved with his force from Athelney to Egbertesstan (now called Brixton), lying to the east of the forest of Selwood, which lay between Devonshire and Somerset.