Stephen Baxter: Conqueror

At the end of the service William, stocky, bristling, stood before the restless ranks of warriors in their mail coats. 'Do you expect a speech? You won't get one from me. You all know what's what. We're stuck here, far from home. Death or victory, those are the only choices today. But if we win you will all soon be drowning in gold and women. Follow me, and it will be so. Let's get it done,' said the Bastard.

The men growled like bears.

William's nobles quickly formed the men into a column. Orm heard it was going to take two hours' marching to get to Harold's supposed muster point. Before the sun was up they were gathering on the road, the infantry in their mail coats, their shields on their arms and their swords in their sheaths on their backs, the archers and crossbowmen and slingshotters with their complicated gear. They stuck to their national groupings and their lords, the Normans with William, and the Flemish and Frankish, the Bretons and the men from Maine marching separately. The cavalry would ride beside the road. Scouts on fast horses set off, riding ahead to work out the lie of the land.

As the infantry began to march, shuffling slowly before they got their rhythm, they sang psalms in Latin. Their thousands of voices, joining together, rose up over the ruins of the burned-out town and the ruined farms beyond. If there were any English left alive they did not show themselves.

Orm was carrying many pounds of iron in his mail coat and his weapons. The massive men around him, laden as he was, jostled as they walked, iron clanking on iron, and dust rose up from their footsteps. But the pace was brisk, the air fresh, and as Orm walked he swung his arms, opening his chest, and felt his heart pump faster. He would soon burn off the ale at this rate. It was going to be a good day, he thought, and he joined the Normans in singing their songs of their God's mercy.

'There,' Sihtric pointed. 'I see them. On that ridge to the south.'

Godgifu peered that way. The sun was up now, and she had to shelter her eyes.

She was standing on marshy ground at the right hand end of a low ridge, where the English army was hastily assembling. The ridge, which was called Sandlacu, ran east to west, and bordered a swathe of uneven land that fell away to the south before her. Harold had advanced here from Caldbec Hill on being warned by his scouts of the Normans' advance.

And on another rise, further to the south, she saw a splash of colour: red, green gold, and what looked like stalks of wheat, waving in the slight breeze. Those stalks were spears.

'The Normans,' she said.

'Well, this is the battlefield,' Sihtric said. 'Where the weaving of time's tapestry will be completed. The Normans to the south, advancing from their ships and their base at Haestingaceaster. The English to the north, blocking their way to Lunden.'

'Shield wall against shield wall.'

'Ah, but it won't be so simple.' Sihtric pointed to bodies of horsemen, indistinct in the mist of morning, that rode back and forth before the Norman lines. 'See that? Cavalry.'

'So the Normans did not give us the days we needed to assemble our forces.'

Sihtric grunted. 'No. The Bastard has come to attack. I suppose if I were William I would have hesitated, and lost. But I am not William.'

'Then we must stand firm against him.'

'It's not impossible. The position is defensible.'

Glancing around, Godgifu saw that Harold, with an intimate knowledge of the country, had been wise to choose this green place, Sandlacu, to make his stand. To get here the Normans would have to cross rough, boggy grazing land. Godgifu saw English soldiers working their way across the field, hauling branches and building hasty mud dams to block streams, flooding the ground to make it even more difficult. And even when they got across the field the Normans would have to climb this ridge, which was guarded by steep drops with a patch of scrubby forest to the left and swampy land to the right.

On the ridge there was a churning grumble as thousands of Englishmen tried to find their place. At the centre Harold's housecarls, several hundred of them, were taking their places in the front line, with their round shields held proud before them, their stabbing spears and axes in their hands. More housecarls, with the more able-looking of the fyrdmen, gathered into ranks behind, seven or eight men deep. Harold's party, under his standards of the Wessex dragon and the Fighting Man, was at the back of this block of men.

His brothers took their places with their own men: Gyrth on the English right with the East Anglians, Leofwine on the left with men from Lunden and the neighbouring shires. As a fyrdman you always fought under your lord or your thegn or your bishop; neighbour fought alongside neighbour.

Almost all of Harold's troops were infantry; he had few archers, for the archers promised from the land of the East Saxons had yet to arrive. But it might be enough. English armies fought only one way, like this, on foot, as a solid mass of shields and swords and axes.

Sihtric and Godgifu were outside the mass of fighting men, with other priests, clerks, and women. Now Sihtric led his sister back from the army's flank, to the cart they had ridden on from Caldbec.

They passed close to Harold's party under their standards. Even now the Godwines were arguing. Gyrth and Leofwine had urged patience, to let the northern earls come, to assemble an overwhelming force. But Harold seemed intent on a fight, on finishing this now.

The mood among the housecarls was fractious too. They were big men, massive and imposing in their mail coats, and in their restlessness and anger they were frightening. But rumours ran through the English camp that William had brought his white papal banner, and around his neck he wore a relic, a withered finger in a golden box: the relic on which Harold had sworn his perjured oath. Why, by leading his army in this battle Harold was perjuring himself again. Men even muttered about the curse the old King was said to have laid on Harold on his deathbed.

Everybody was intensely religious, and soldiers more than most. There was a sense of destiny hanging over the battlefield, of forces greater than human channelling through the bodies of the warriors: the will of an offended God, and at least in Sihtric's head the manipulations of the Weaver. And a cloud of unease hung over the excommunicated King, gradually rotting his authority and his confidence.

Sihtric reached their cart and rummaged in the baggage. And he pulled a mail coat out of a sack.

Godgifu was astonished. 'What do you think you are doing?'

'My bishop is in the ranks already. I'm a sort of reserve.' He sighed. 'It is a day when God wills us to fight, I think, Godgifu.'

'You'll be cut down in a heartbeat.'

'And so will many others, like blades of grass. But perhaps, together, it will be enough.'

'Sihtric-'

'I'm not going to debate this, sister. Look, help me get it on, will you?' He held up the mail coat, with its dangling leather ties; he looked as if he could barely manage its weight.

Harold came walking along the ridge. A big man, his greying red hair tied back from his clear face, he climbed up on a cart so his men could see him, and there was a ragged cheer. 'We have the Normans like rats in a trap. They will fight. They will ride their horses at us, but horses are useless against shield walls. Attack the horse, not the man, remember that. And stand firm. That's all we have to do.

'The Normans are brutes, who make slaves of men and whores of women. They mean to stay, and if they defeat us today they defeat our children too, and our children's children, for all time. But they won't defeat us. The Normans are on our soil, and their blood will water our crops. Stand firm – remember that one thing, whatever happens.'