Egbert had kept beside him, and twice, when the lad had been smitten to his knees by the enemy, covered him with his shield and beat off the foe.
"You are over-young for such a fight as this, Edmund," he said when the Danes had taken to flight.

"You will need another four or five years over your head before you can stand in battle against these fierce Northmen.

They break down your guard by sheer weight; but you bore yourself gallantly, and I doubt not will yet be as famous a warrior as was your brave father." Edmund did not join in the pursuit, being too much bruised and exhausted to do so; but Egbert with the men of Sherborne followed the flying Danes until nightfall.
"You have done well, my young ealdorman," Prince Alfred said to the lad after the battle.

"I have been wishing much that you could be with me during the past month, but I heard that you were building a strong fort and deemed it better to let you continue your work undisturbed.

When it is finished I trust that I shall have you often near me; but I fear that for a time we shall have but little space for peaceful pursuits, for the Danes are coming, as I hear, in great troops westward, and we shall have many battles to fight ere we clear the land of the them." In those days a defeat, however severe, had not the same decisive effect as it has in modern warfare.