'Ow!' His target straightened up. It was a man, dressed in a leather tunic and trousers, with a ragged shock of blond hair. He was carrying some kind of spade. And he was clutching his balls. He glared at Wuffa and began striding across the road. He was big, with muscles that bulged through his sleeves. He spat abuse in a Norse tongue of which Wuffa could make out only one word: 'Arsewipe'.

Wuffa was a Saxon warrior, son of Coenred, and he stood his ground, his hand hovering at the hilt of his seax, his bone-handled knife.

The big Norse came to a halt not an arm's length from Wuffa. The Norse was about Wuffa's age, around twenty, and they were both blond and fair-skinned, and dressed similarly in leather tunic and trousers. But Wuffa wore his hair in the Saxon style, shaved at his forehead and long at the back of his neck, while the Norse wore his yellow mane loose and ragged.

Wuffa recognised this man. 'I know you,' he said in his own tongue. 'You're from the fleet at the wharf.'

The Norse fired out more insults.

Wuffa tried again, in Latin. 'I know you.'

At least that stopped the flow of abuse. 'So what, arsewipe?'

Britain was an island populated by Roman-British, Germans and Irish, with traders always streaming over from the continent. Most adults knew a little Latin, a relic of empire, the only common tongue. This young Norse was no exception. Though he evidently didn't know the Latin for 'arsewipe'.

'I am Coenred's son. We are unloading your boats-'

The Norse kicked a loose rock. 'And is this how you greet your trading partners, with a cobble in the balls?'

Wuffa held his gaze. They both knew they had a choice here, either to fight it out or resolve their difference. Wuffa said, 'I should be working. Even if you don't kill me my father will finish me off for you.'

The Norse laughed. But he warned, 'You have to say it.'

'All right. I apologise.'