In early August 991, a ragtag army of Anglo-Saxons joined battle with a party of Viking raiders at Maldon on the coast of Essex. The encounter was recorded in an Old English long poem, though only the work's middle section survives. Applying a modern perspective to its heroic ideals, J.O. Morgan re-imagines that summer's day on which some men fought, loyal to the end, and some men fled, fearing the battle was already lost.