Conqueror

'Yes. If we can survive to dark, we can still win.'

She glanced across at the Norman lines, the ranks of men bristling with upraised spears. 'But,' she said, 'the Normans must know this too.'

XXVI

The battlefield was quiet for the moment, as both sides, exhausted, gathered their strength before another charge. Some men were drinking, even eating; it had been a long day. On the field itself nothing moved save for the scavenging birds, and soldiers from both sides who stripped the dead of their weapons and mail coats; there had never been enough of the expensive hauberks to go around.

Orm sat beside Robert of Mortain in a block of infantry, all seated or lying down, panting. Orm's shield lay on the ground before him, splintered by multiple blows.

'We're ru

William rode before the lines, his helmet off, astride his fourth horse of the day. 'Get up,' the Duke commanded now. 'Get up, I say! Stand on your feet!' His guttural voice carried along the lines.

The men struggled to stand. Orm tried to set an example, but he was as weary as the rest, every bone and muscle ached, and his mail was heavy as a casket. He hadn't been cut seriously, but every strike he parried, every arrow that punched his mail, was a blow that shook his bones and used up his strength that bit more. It was as if some huge man armed with an oaken club had battered him all day.

And yet he got to his feet.

William stood up in his stirrups, a stout, powerful man, still full of energy. 'The Norse attacked England this year,' he said. 'They came in three hundred ships. Harold sent the survivors home in thirty. You face a great war leader, no doubt about that. But you will beat him, and when you do you will choke on gold, and your cocks will drop off from the shagging, and Jesus will start laying in the ales for you in heaven.'

The men cheered raggedly.

'But to win the day we have to make one last charge. The cavalry will run at them from our right flank, and the archers will rain down iron from our left. Everything we've got thrown into the pot. One last dash up that filthy hill, one last battering against the English shields. And when it's done – then, I promise you, you can rest.'

The double meaning in that escaped no man. But William had them. He was a distillation of his age, Orm thought, with his iron piety and strong right arm, a warrior Christian with no doubt in his head at all. He was far more stupid than Harold, but his mind was stronger, and maybe that would win the day.

'All or nothing,' Robert said to Orm. 'All those years of fighting and surviving, plotting and politicking and war-making, a lifetime of it – for William it has all come down to this, one last charge. He's a brute, but by God he's a magnificent brute.'

William wheeled on his bucking horse, and raised his mace in the air. 'Follow me!'

Orm didn't hesitate. He roared, grabbed his battered shield and sword, and ran in the vanguard in the dash up the hill.

The ground was even more difficult than in the morning, for it was churned by the passage of thousands of feet and hooves, and littered by the corpses of men and horses, a corpse every pace, it seemed to him. But he went on. Once more the English hailed down rocks and arrows, but Orm ignored the lethal rain. Then he came upon a heap of dead horses, rolled down the hill by the English to pile up in a rough barricade, and he had to clamber over broken flesh and stinking fur and purplish spilled guts. But he went on, burning up the last of his energy, for it was the last time he would have to do this, come what may, live or die.

Now he was close enough to see the faces of the English. All or nothing. He roared and charged.

The shield walls clashed for the last time in all England's long and bloody history. However else men died in the future, it wouldn't be like this.

Orm's shield slammed against that of an Englishman, huge, bloodied, powerful, but that crucial bit slower than Orm, and the mercenary managed to raise his sword and thrust it into the Englishman's face. His skull broke in like an egg, leaving a cavity within which blood bubbled – but he was gone, falling back. And another came to take his place. The new man raised an axe, two-handed, but Orm got his shield arm up, and the blow was deflected by the shield's boss, but that mighty blow shattered the wood. Orm hurled the ruin of the shield at his opponent, and as the man flinched to evade it Orm drove the hilt of his sword into his mouth, feeling teeth and soft tissues give way, and he pulled back the sword, and slashed and cut until another ruined face gazed up at him from another lifeless corpse. Orm was left without a shield. Without thinking he reached down and grabbed a fallen sword – English or Norman, he didn't know. With the stranger's sword in his left hand, his own sword in his right, he fought on, using one sword as a shield while clubbing with the other, as one English after another fell before him. He had seen men fight like this before, but had never tried it himself. He had no choice.

He fought, and fought.

Were the English failing at last? They seemed drawn, exhausted, even more so than the Normans. And they were distracted by the continuing rain of Norman arrows.

Then there was a great moan. Orm, still fighting, saw that the standard of Harold, the Fighting Man, directly before him, was falling. He roared, and fought harder than ever, the two swords flashing before him.

And the English began to fall back.

XXVII

Sihtric screamed, 'No!' He ran towards the fallen standard.

Godgifu hurried after her brother, pushing through the ranks of housecarls and prelates.

The King lay on the ground, his head cushioned by a bishop's arms. An arrow protruded from his collapsed face. It was growing dark, and she couldn't see if he still breathed.

Godgifu was horrified. 'Sihtric – Edward's curse – he wished Harold to see his brothers fall before a blinding…'

Sihtric fretted, not about his King or his country, but about the prophecy. 'Another hour would have done it. Four centuries of history culminate in this moment – just another hour – and a chance fall of an arrow has ruined it all!'

But Godgifu thought the battle had been lost in Harold's heart long before the arrow fell.

The sound of the fighting came closer. Godgifu heard hasty commands. 'Hold the wall firm! Hold the wall!' And, 'Save the King. With me, with me!' Men scrambled to take their positions, grim-faced, drawing their swords.

Godgifu faced Sihtric, lost in his foolish mail suit. 'Give me your sword,' she said.

'But-'

'Now!'

He drew it from its scabbard and handed it to her.

She turned and ran towards the fighting.

And the shield wall collapsed. The Normans, screaming, poured over the crest of the hill for which they had fought all day. The English, falling back, their shields raised, gathered into knots, fighting to stay alive.

Orm, screaming too but unable to hear himself, fought on in the gloom, working his two heavy swords, cutting through one Englishman after another. Still he fought towards the standards, where the fallen King must lie.

A new opponent stood before him, shorter than he was, no shield, no mail, just a sword. He saw a face, blue eyes, and he knew who this was. But after a day of war his body made its own decisions. He scissored his two swords through his opponent's neck and severed her head.

Her. This was Godgifu, dead in an instant, and he couldn't have stopped himself.

He heard a scream like a strangled dog, and something heavy flew at his throat. It was Sihtric, done up in mail but weaponless. He had his hands locked around Orm's throat, but Orm pushed him away with ease and held him at arm's length, until the priest's rage gave way to a wretched weeping, with Godgifu's headless corpse slumped at their feet.