Conqueror

by Stephen Baxter

  ‘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.’

  XXV

  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.’

  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 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 c
ocks 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.

  The charging Norman cavalry were already pursuing the fyrdmen, who, broken, were starting to flee. The English housecarls grimly fought on, paying back their final debt to their King. And four Norman warriors broke through the last English line and fell on the body of Harold, hacking at his windpipe and torso, his limbs, even severing his genitals, crushing out the last of his life.

  EPILOGUE

  AD 1066

  There was a commotion, a rumble of anticipation. Men separated, making way.

  The King marched down the aisle of the abbey church. Archbishop Ealdred walked ahead of him, magnificent in his embroidered silk and purple-dyed godweb, bearing the new crown of England, a circlet of gold embedded with jewels. From the heaviness of his gait Orm suspected that the King was wearing a coat of chain-mail under his golden cloak. He feared assassins, even here.

  Leaden-footed, stiff, the King looked exhausted after his year of war. But as he walked he glared left and right. None of the nobles dared meet his eye.

  ‘I think I wish your future had come about,’ Orm said impulsively. ‘I wish I were readying a longship to sail to Vinland in the spring, with Godgifu at my side, and my child in her belly.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sihtric muttered. ‘Better that than this. This is wrong. We are in the wrong future, my friend. And we are stuck with it.’

  ‘But could it have been different?’

  Sihtric snorted. ‘You were there, Viking. You know how close it came. If Harold had eliminated Tostig as I urged him - if common cause could have been found between Harold and Hardrada - if only the winds had shifted earlier and William had landed in midsummer, when Harold was waiting with a fresh army - at the battle, if William had stayed down when he fell - if not for that arrow which brought down Harold himself, if the shield wall could have held just another hour ... There are so many ways it could have happened. And we would be attending Harold’s Christmas feast.’

  ‘And if any of these ifs had come about? What then?’<
br />
  Sihtric pulled his lip. ‘Well, with Hardrada dead and William fallen, England would have faced no serious outside threat for a generation. There’s always the question of the succession. Tricky, that. If Harold had lived long enough he might have married his son by the sister of the northern earls into the family of Edward. Then, you see, he could have united in his grandson the Godwine blood, the northern earls, and the line of Alfred and the Cerdicings, the oldest royal dynasty in Europe. Who could challenge the legitimacy of that?’

  ‘I’ll tell you who,’ Orm said. ‘Harold’s children of his first family, by Edith Swanneshals.’

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ Sihtric said. ‘But it’s a game that will never play out.’

  And Edith, rather than siring kings, had had to identify her husband’s butchered corpse on his last battlefield.