Stephen Baxter: Conqueror

And beyond the fort Orm saw the sparks of fires across the darksome landscape. Signal beacons, bearing news of the landing to King Harold.

The vanguard of the English army reached the hoar apple tree as dusk fell.

A horn blew. The lead riders slowed, pulled off the road, and began to dismount. They unloaded their weapons and shields and other bits of baggage from their horses, and looked for a place to spread out their cloaks and rest. The men moved as if they were very old, Godgifu thought. Some of them limped, favouring wounds from Stamfordbrycg. Barely a word was spoken.

Godgifu herself had ridden with Sihtric, all the way from Lunden, just as they had ridden down from Stamfordbrycg to Lunden only days earlier. Every bone in her body ached from the jarring of the endless ride, and she felt so stiff she could barely lift her leg over the saddle and reach the ground.

In the failing light she looked back along the road. It was a Roman track that cut across the rolling green country, back towards Lunden. Long robbed of all its stone it was nothing but a strip of turf, but eerily dead straight. The bulk of the army, the troops on horseback and their baggage in carts, was strung out along the road. It might take them an hour to assemble here, or more.

This place was called Caldbec Hill, only perhaps half a day's ride north of Haestingaceaster, where William was camped. This was Godwine country, which Harold knew intimately from a boyhood of hunting, and when in Lunden he had issued the order for his new army to be assembled at the old hoar tree, everybody had known what he meant.

The apple tree itself, thick with lichen, stood at the top of its hill impassively, silhouetted against the deepening blue of the sky. It was October. The summer had been wet, the autumn warm; the tree was still in leaf, but there was no sign of fruit. Godgifu wondered how old the tree was. She had heard that the Romans first brought apples to Britain; perhaps a legionary planted the tree when he passed this way, building the road. Impulsively she stroked the tree's rumpled bark; it felt warm, solidly alive. It would stand here long after the events of the next few days were history.

Sihtric handed her a leather flask of flat beer. 'Careful,' he said. 'Our pagan ancestors worshipped trees.'

She grunted. 'Trees don't make war on each other. Perhaps they are wiser than us.'

'I'll have to set you some penance for that.'

The first baggage carts drew up. The housecarls and the fyrdmen unloaded equipment and tents. Godgifu saw them lifting down heavy mail coats, so rigid they kept their shape, like hollowed-out men.

Godgifu asked, 'What day is it?'

'I'm not sure. Friday, I think.'

'We're all exhausted. All this damned riding.' She worked her muscles and joints, twisting her arms, rocking her hips, trying to smooth out the aches.

'Yes. But only the housecarls have ridden with us from Stamfordbrycg. The fyrdmen are local; they are fresh…' Troubled, he let the sentence tail away.

It was true that the fyrdmen were fresh, relatively. The King had sent fast riders to raise the fyrd of the southern shires, and as they rode down from Lunden it had been reassuring to see them gathering at their muster points, with their polished swords and gleaming mail. But there were fewer of them than Godgifu had expected.

After all this was the fourth such call-out of this extraordinary year. England, it was thought, could raise some fourteen thousand fighting men in total. Thousands had already been lost in the battles at the Foul Ford and at Stamfordbrycg, and many of these southern fyrdmen had already spent a long summer waiting on the south coast for the Norman invasion. England's strength was being drained by this year of total war.

Godgifu looked to the south, wondering how far away the nearest Norman was.

Sihtric seemed plagued by doubt. 'Some say Harold has marched to meet the Normans too hastily. He has allowed the Bastard's violation of Godwine land to inflame his thinking.'

'No,' Godgifu said. 'Harold has a plan. At Haestingaceaster William has a defensible position, but Harold has ordered his navy to cut off any Norman retreat by sea, and stationed here to the north we contain him from moving further inland. We have bottled up the Bastard. All we need is a few days for the northern earls and the rest of the fyrd to join us, while the Normans starve and die.'

Sihtric muttered, 'Just a few days. But will the Normans give us even that much?'

'Well, in the meantime, I'm hungry. I'm going to find some food.' She walked off, looking for the first fires.

Orm was wakened by a kick in the ribs. His hand went reflexively to his sword.

The kick had come from Guy fitz Gilbert. He carried a lantern so the men could see his face. All around Orm on the floor of this dingy mud-walled tavern, men under their cloaks were stirring, grumbling.

The window, just a hole in the wall, looked south, and the sky was still dark. Orm could hear the roll of the sea, and smelled salt and smoke. He remembered where he was. 'Haestingaceaster.'

'Yes,' fitz Gilbert said. 'You're still here in this arsehole of a place.'

Orm sat up gingerly. His head was sore, his belly aching. Last night he had joined the men in drinking this miserable tavern's stock of English beer dry. He could do with a bit more time to sleep it off, but that wasn't to be. He got to his feet and looked for his boots. 'I don't even know what day it is.'

'Saturday,' fitz Gilbert said, glaring. 'God's teeth, Egilsson, I'm glad it's not me paying your wages today.'

Orm scowled at him. 'Why am I even awake?'

'Because the Duke has had word, from Robert fitz Wimarc…' There were Normans in England before William's landing – merchants, mercenaries, immigrants. This fitz Wimarc had been a court official under Edward, and had no love for Harold. Now fitz Wimarc had informed William of the events of the last few weeks: Harold's victory at Stamfordbrycg, his rapid march to Lunden.

'They're trying to bottle us up,' Orm said. 'It's what I would do.'

'William is having none of it,' said fitz Gilbert.

'He isn't?'

Fitz Gilbert grinned, wolfish. Aged about thirty, he was small, stout, balding. In Normandy fitz Gilbert had struck Orm as pompous, ambitious, an irritant who was never likely to achieve much. But in England he seemed to be growing in stature, assuming an air of command. Normans were natural warriors, and on this stolen patch of foreign soil, fitz Gilbert was in his element. He said, 'We're going out to meet them before Harold has time to get his wind back from his march and dig in.'

'When?'

'Today. This morning. Now. God's teeth, Orm, find your wretched boots and come with me.'

Today was the day, then. The climax. Orm felt his heart thump.

Outside the tavern, under a pall of smoke from burning buildings, there was a stench of blood and shit. It came from the bodies of the tavern-keeper, and his wife and daughters. The women had been raped in the usual way, their lives ending with drunken impalings on swords and spears and axe-handles.

This had been a pretty place when they came here, like much of the country Orm had seen before, with sheep flocking in the well-kept fields, and bright new parish churches shining in the autumn sun. Now the sheep were driven off, the farms robbed and ruined, the people killed, even the churches burned out; this corner of England already smelled of blood and smoke, like Brittany and Maine and Anjou.

Riding with Normans, you got used to such things. Orm walked away, looking for the leaders.

Under the grey light of the pre-dawn English sky, William attended mass. Officiated by his half-brother Odo, a bishop in chain mail, it was held in the open so that as many of William's men as possible could see him and join in his prayers. William had a reliquary around his neck, a gold box containing the saint's finger on which Harold had sworn his broken oath in Bayeux.