Conqueror (40 page)

The English commanders remained on the ridge, screaming for the troops to come back to their positions. Godgifu recognised Gyrth from his shield, uniquely adorned, a round slab of wood with a cruel spike protruding from the boss -
and
then he fell too, she saw, stunned, felled by a chance javelin strike.

His housecarls clustered around his body. Two of the beautiful Godwine brothers, fallen already.

Sihtric had not seen this. He yelled, hotly excited, ‘Harold must pursue! This is the moment! If he strikes now the Normans will lose their shape - their own horses will trample them down - he can drive them back to the sea!’

Godgifu asked, ‘What about standing firm? That’s what Harold ordered.’

‘But war is about opportunities,’ cried Sihtric, a skinny priest all but lost in his heavy mail coat. ‘And those opportunities must be taken. At this moment Harold can win the day, and all of the future! ... Come with me,’ he snapped. ‘Help me get to Harold. We must urge the right course on him.’

Godgifu had no choice but to follow.

She saw a unit of cavalry wheel and run towards the fleeing Bretons, as if to rally them, led by a stout man on a black charger. She marvelled at the Normans’ tight control of their men and their horses. She wondered if that leader could possibly be William himself.

And in the turmoil, the cavalry leader went down.

Orm saw William fall.

From his position at the centre of the withdrawing Norman line, Orm had a clear view of the cavalry charge, and the Breton collapse, and the pursuit by the English on their right. He saw William leading a unit of cavalry towards the Bretons, intending to rally them, or to scatter the English. The Bastard was quite unmistakable on his black Iberian charger, with his special hauberk with its mail leggings.

And when he fell Orm heard the murmuring. ‘He is down! The Bastard is down!’

Orm knew this was the crux of the battle. With their leader fallen, their flank collapsing, the Normans were wavering. A bold thrust by the English now might win the day.

But there was still a chance to act.

Orm rushed out of the line, shield on arm, sword in hand, and sprinted to the left, over mud into which bodies had been pressed by the weight of fighting men. The Bretons were still retreating, and the English were falling on them, savage as wolves. Horses, mostly without riders, wheeled around this mob.

And Orm made out a glint of polished mail. It must be the Duke and his companions. They were surrounded by a ring of English, who roared and thrust at them.

Orm could not fight his way in there alone. He glanced around quickly, and found a Breton, a very young man, standing in the dirt. He was bewildered, but he was not running away like his countrymen. Orm shook his shoulder. ‘You. You! What is your name?’

‘Nennius.’

‘You are a Breton?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why are you here?’

The Breton said slowly, ‘My ancestors were British. I want a little revenge on the English for taking the Lost Land.’ And he grinned.

‘Good answer. And do you want to save the Duke?’

The boy’s eyes widened. ‘How?’

‘Come with me. Back to back!’

They ran sideways into the mob of English who surrounded the Duke’s party. One English fighter had lost his helmet, and Orm severed his head with a single blow, and ran forward through the warm fountain of his blood before the man fell, and then he took on the next, and the next. At his back Nennius fought too, less expertly but with just as much passion.

They reached the Normans who circled the Duke. William had indeed fallen, but his horse had been cut down, not him. Odo, bishop of Bayeux, was at his brother’s side, fighting as hard as any man. He wore a bishop’s white under his armour, and he sang psalms at the top of his lusty voice as his mace swung back and forth through English flesh - not a sword, for as a man of God he was forbidden to use a weapon that drew blood.

Robert of Mortain was here too. ‘You took your time,’ he shouted at Orm.

‘So dock my wages. And I’ll give you a bonus,’ Orm growled at Nennius, ‘if you can bring the Duke a horse.’ He pushed the Breton away.

Then he stood with Robert and faced the ferocious, encircling English. They were fyrdmen, decently equipped, many of them strong and brave enough - and dangerous, as were all men with the stink of battle in their nostrils. The Normans had enough skill to hold them off, but not the strength to fight their way out of here. And one by one the Normans around William would fall.

Robert said, ‘If Harold were to strike now we would be done for.’

‘He hasn’t yet,’ Orm yelled. ‘And until he does—’

Three English came at him at once. He drove his sword into the throat of the first, its hilt into the eye socket of the second, and slammed the boss of his shield into the face of the third.

On the ridge, Harold stood beneath his Fighting Man standard.

It was almost calm here, Godgifu thought, where the men of the shield wall, steely housecarls all, still held their line. But on the English right the carnage continued.

‘We must strike,’ Sihtric moaned. ‘They say William is down. We must advance!’

But Harold stood alone, unspeaking, and his housecarls had not allowed the priest to approach him.

Everybody knew why. Not a full hour could have passed yet since the Normans began their advance, and yet already Harold had lost both his brothers. Just as he had lost Tostig at Stamfordbrycg, and his eldest brother Swein years before. Now, save for poor Wulfnoth who had spent a lifetime in Norman gaols, Harold was the only one of the brilliant Godwine sons left alive.

And, here at the cusp of this battle for England, as the future of the whole world pivoted around him, Harold hesitated.

Godgifu heard a great roar go up from the Normans. She turned to see.

 

The boy Nennius returned to Orm with a riderless horse. It had been a miracle he had led it through the turmoil of the rout. He grinned as he handed its bridle to Orm.

Grinned as an English lance plunged through his mail coat and out through his belly.

Grinned as Orm sent his murderer to follow his victim into another life.

William ran to the horse and leapt on to it, athletic for such a heavy man. He lifted his helmet off his head, and the horse bucked and snorted. ‘To me! To me!’ He immediately began fighting again, laying about him with his long mace, the saint’s finger dangling at his neck. He was astonishing, unstoppable, apparently with no belief in his own mortality, and he hurled himself at the English like death itself.

A roar went up across the Norman lines as the news spread that William lived. Even the Bretons rallied. The English, dismayed, fell back.

Now more horns blew, and to a renewed thunder of hooves, cavalry units charged in from the left. Suddenly the English who had pursued the Bretons were cut off from the main body of their forces at the top of the ridge. And as Orm, Robert, Odo and the others fought their way back to the Norman lines with William, the English, isolated, were chopped down one by one.

Robert of Mortain found Orm. ‘You earned your pay, you lucky whelp. And you won’t even have to pay out to that kid with the horse.’

‘What now? Do we advance again?’

‘No. We let the archers and the cavalry do a bit of work for a change. We fall back, bring up fresh troops, rebuild the line. Then we attack again.’

The hours wore away.

It was an October day, and the sun, always low, swung around until it lay in the south, hanging over the Norman lines and glaring in the faces of the English like the eye of God. It looked down on a field increasingly littered with the dead and dying, both English and Norman, and the steaming carcasses of horses.

Still the battle was not done. The energy and the bravado of the morning were long gone, and only a few insults floated over the broken ground. And yet, when the time came and the trumpets blew, the weary Normans drove themselves up the slope, clambering over the bodies of the dead, to hurl themselves at the English. Over and over
again
. It was a collective madness, Godgifu thought, numbed, a madness that would not be done with until they were all dead, and only the ravens moved on the battlefield, pecking out eyes.

Sihtric came to stand with his sister. He still wore his chain mail, stiff and unbloodied. ‘I have the prophecy with me,’ he said feverishly. ‘The Menologium. I hoped to stiffen the King’s resolve with it. But Harold won’t act. He broods on Edward’s curse, that he would lose his brothers before he died. Even the promise of a northern empire, of a whole new world, doesn’t matter to him as much as the pain of his brothers’ loss, the fear of God’s wrath. I think for Harold the day has become a trial by warfare, and in his grief and guilt he is letting God decide the outcome. I wonder if the Weaver thought of that.’

Godgifu said, ‘The Weaver sees us as figures in a tapestry. The Weaver isn’t fighting, here and now. We are. And yet, Sihtric, the wall holds firm.’

‘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.’

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 running out of time,’ Robert said to Orm. ‘Not of men, but time. The daylight will be gone soon, and so will our chances... Here is the Duke.’

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.