When they got close enough the English responded. Missiles fell from the sky on the Normans, a hail of arrows, javelins, and stones from slings. Orm raised his shield, and took blows from falling rocks that jarred his shield arm. Again the height helped the English; their rocks and bolts fell hard. Your mail coat should protect you from the arrows: the English had no crossbows. Even so men fell around Orm, unluckily picked out in the face or neck by an arrow or a javelin. Blood blossomed bright, its first iron stink as shocking as ever.

Orm sensed the men around him flagging, tired even before they closed to fight, young faces showing fear at the first nearby spilling of blood. He raised his axe above his head. ‘Let’s at them, lads! Let’s go in running! Those motherless English cowards won’t expect that!’ The shield wall in front responded. With a renewed roar they ran, their feet driving into the muddy ground. It was hard going up the brutal slope, but once he had the momentum, once his blood was up, Orm felt himself fly.

And suddenly they came on the English. The shield walls closed on each other with a slam. Orm was trapped in a struggling crowd, only one rank behind the Norman shield wall. The sheer momentum of massively armoured men smashing into their line pushed the English wall back, one pace, two. But they were held by their own ranks behind them, and the battle compressed into a long line of men, pressing. Metal flashed, blood splashed bright, and the screaming began.

Orm could barely move, let alone raise a weapon. But right before him a Norman infantryman went down under an English sword, and suddenly there was a hole. Orm stood on the still-writhing body of the fallen Norman to fill the gap.

A big brute of an Englishman faced Orm, swinging his sword under the Normans’ shields, hoping to hamstring his opponents. But Orm got his axe over his head, free of the mêlée, and slammed it down into the face of the Englishman. Bone crunched, and the man’s head was split like an apple from forehead to nose. His jaw gaped, wrenched loose of its joints, and blood gushed from the ruin of his face, drenching Orm’s tunic. For one heartbeat Orm felt something quail in his soul. This first instant was always a shock in the head and the gut, when your arms and hands first felt the ache of the sheer effort of ending a man’s life.

Then the man fell back. Orm dragged his axe out of his face.