" There, ahead of me, was the enemy.
I love the Danes. There are no better men to fight with, drink with, laugh with or live with. Yet that day, as on so many others of my life, they were the enemy and they waited for me in a gigantic shield wall arrayed across the down. There were thousands of Danes, Spear-Danes and Sword-Danes, Danes who had come to make this land theirs, and we had come to keep it ours. "

― Bernard Cornwell , The Pale Horseman (The Saxon Stories, #2)