Do you feel as if a fight would be cheerful after this spade work ?" Now I could wish for nothing better, and I said so.
"Well, then," he went on, laughing at my eagerness, "go to Ethelnoth, and take twenty men, and do you and he fall on that post from Othery by night; and when you have scattered it, come back into the fen.

I would have you lose no men, but I would make the Danes mass together by attack on some one point, and that as soon as may be, before Hubba comes.

I do not want to hold their place." Now that was the first of daily attacks on the Danish posts, at different places along the Selwood and Polden hills, until they thought that we wished to win Edington height, where we began and annoyed them most often.

So I will tell how such a raid fared.
Good it was to lay aside pick and spade and take sword Helmbiter again, and don mail and helm; and I made Harek fence with me, lest I should have lost my sword craft through use of the weapons whereby the churl conquers mother earth.

But once the good sword was in my hand I forgot all but the warrior's trade.
So Ethelnoth and I and twenty young thanes went in the evening to Othery island, and there found a fenman to guide us, and so went to the foot of Edington hill just as darkness fell.