They rode all night through a most desolate country, wasted by fire and sword in all directions. Only in a few spots was there any appearance of cultivation, for who would sow when they knew not who should reap? Not one lonely country house, such as abounded in the days of Edgar the Pacific, did they see standing, although they passed the blackened ruins of many an abode, showing where once the joys of home held sway. Here and there they came upon the relics of strife, in the shape of bodies of men and horses left to rot, and in one spot, where a ford had been defended, the rival nations had left their fallen representatives by hundreds. It must have been months before, yet no one had buried the bodies. Such people as still existed without the fortified towns had betaken themselves to the woods, or the recesses of the deep swamps and forests, as the people of Aescendune had done.