There will be charms of some sort needed before Ethered sees so much as a scale." Whereon they dismounted, and Kolgrim took his axe from his saddle bow, asking where the river was, while he wondered that such a simple matter as breaking a hole in the ice and dropping a line among the hungry fish, who would swarm to the air, had not been thought of.

We had not yet learned that such a winter as this comes but seldom to the west of England, and the thanes knew nothing of our northern ways.
Then Ethelnoth led Heregar and me across twisting and almost unseen paths, safer now because of the frost, though one knew that in some places a step to right or left would plunge him through the crust of hard snow into a bottomless peat bog.

The alder thickets grew everywhere round dark, ice-bound pools of peat-stained water, and we could nowhere see more than a few yards before us; and it was hard to say how far we had gone from the upland edge of the swamp when the ground began to rise from the fen, and grew harder among better timber.

But for the great frost, one would have needed a boat in many places.
Then we came to a clearing, in which stood a house that was hardly more than a cottage, and round it were huts and cattle sheds.

And this was where the king was--the house of Denewulf the herdsman, the king's own thrall.