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.