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The Invader- First Presented in the Eagle Book of Amazing Stories Annual 1974. In battle after battle he was triumphant. He was the greatest of the Normans and his ambition was to win a crown-the crown of England!
William determined to teach the impetuous Roger a lesson and assert his mastery. The rival armies clashed on Norman soil and in a fierce little battle Roger was killed. The victory was a signal for the "barons of France to look twice at Normandy and its boy ruler: here, some of them thought, was no insignificant pretender but one to be respected and feared.
Some of them-but not all. Guy of Burgundy laughed scornfully at the fame of his distant relative and, spurring his horse, rode to the court of King Henry of France to claim for himself the dukedom of Normandy. To push his claim he attacked William's castle at Valognes and William, caught
by surprise, was obliged once again to flee through the night.
William was then 19 and all night long as he rode across the country towards Falaise in the bright# moonlight he thought about his plans and energy and determination welled up in his heart. Meanwhile, the quarrelsome, lawless lords felt that their days of liberty for themselves and oppression of everyone else would soon be over if they did not strike quickly. Hastily they rallied to the standard of Guy of Burgundy.
It was a great battle in importance rather than numbers. William called to his loyal provinces for help, and the knights came riding to his banner, while from the Bessin and the Cotentin districts the rebels came down to meet them. In the story of the fight we hear nothing of the Norman archers. They were famous enough afterwards, but this battle was a battle between mounted knights, a true battle of chivalry. The place was near the River Orne, and the long slopes of the low hills stretched far and wide, like the English downs across the Channel, lying pleasantly towards the summer sun.

Here, on the field called Vales-dunes, came King Henry himself to lend his strength to William, in whose favour he had decided against the claim of Guy. As the Norman knights and gentlemen cheered their King, they fingered their sword-hilts and buckled their saddle-girths, impatient for the battle to begin.
Then, Dexaide !'-the old Norman war-cry rang out and was drowned at once in the clash of armour. The knights broke their lances and fought sword to sword in a hand-to-hand fight with the sheer strength of horse and man.
In the thick of it, fighting for his dukedom, was
William. With his own hand he slew the noblest and most daring of Guy's braves, a knight named Hadrez, driving the sharp steel of his sword straight through his hardy foe. All this proved too much for Guy of Burgundy's men. Away they went in groups of three or four, away for dear life everyone of them, riding this way and that, trying to get out of reach of their enemies. The duke chased after them like a hound after hares until they reached the River Orne with its deep current.

There men and horses floundered in the
water and many hot wouuds stained it crimson as men and horses struggled desperately in the throes of drowning.
The victory made William the master of Normandy. He treated his prisoners fairly for there was a sense in which William the Conqueror was not a man of blood. He would sacrifice countless lives for his ambition: he did not scruple to mutilate his enemies; he would keep men in solitary confinement for years; but an execution in cold blood was something from which he always shrank.
For a time, realising that they had a master, the Norman knights and priests were quiet. Then one old enemy, William Talvas, began to defy the duke from the town of Alen on, causing William to march speedily in his direction. When the Duke came within sight of the town, Talvas's army mocked him from the walls. As an allusion to William's
descendance from a tanner, they spread skins over the walls and beat them vigorously, yelling that there was plenty of work for the tanner who had inherited a dukedom. William's blood boiled. He swore that he would treat them 'as a man lops a tree with an axe'. Sure enough, when the siege was over and Alen on was at the Conqueror's mercy he demanded 32 prisoners. From these unfortunates he chopped off their noses, hands and feet, and threw the severed parts back over the walls of the town.
The time had come for William to marry. As he was the pride of the Norman court at its capital of Rouen, so the court of nearby Flanders, centred on the town of Lille, also had its hope and pride. She was Matilda, daughter of Baldwin of Flanders. It was natural that both William and Baldwin should want Matilda to unite their territories by marriage to Duke William.