Dalip’s gaze followed Stanislav’s, down to the ground. ‘People, you know, have babies. Even by the end of the Neolithic, most of Britain had been worked over once. By the Middle Ages, everywhere was lived in, and that’s with a tiny population, a couple of million.’

‘You are very knowledgeable.’

‘School, that’s all. But everything we know about where people live: along rivers, on the coast, especially where rivers flow out into the sea. We should have already found a town, a couple of villages, and farms everywhere. There’s nothing. Nothing at all.’ Dalip spread his hands wide. ‘There’s no one here. This is a, I don’t know what to call it, a blank slate, a new world.’

‘Yet,’ said Stanislav, ‘when we do find what we could call a village, it has been deserted for many, many years. The number of people should be increasing, not decreasing. There is no lack of space for them to spread out into.’

He rumbled deep in his chest, a noise that made Dalip look askance.

‘Have you seen this before?’

‘Yes,’ said Stanislav. ‘Twice before. Once when I was young, and again when I was not so young.’

‘And?’

‘The cause was the same. War.’

‘That’s not good.’

‘No.’ Stanislav looked over his shoulder, either to see who might be listening, or to check that the others were still there. Dalip looking behind him, too. There was Mary, and further back, possibly Luiza.

‘But you think this might have been twenty years ago.’

‘Yes. There is another question, of course. How did the wolfman find us so quickly, if this is an empty land?’

‘I … don’t know.’ Dalip didn’t, either. ‘Chance?’

‘Perhaps. Have we met anyone else? By chance?’

‘No. No, we haven’t.’

‘So he was waiting for us, yes?’

‘But we didn’t know we were coming,’ said Dalip. ‘How could he possibly do that?’

‘When I mean waiting, I mean watching. He did not know when we might appear, but if he knew where we would appear? Then it is very possible. Then we must consider why he would keep watch over a door which, until we passed through it, we did not know existed.’

‘Other people must have come through.’

‘Yes. What do you think happened to them?’

‘The same thing that happened to us.’ Dalip stopped walking, right there in the forest within earshot of the slow flow of the river. ‘They were told about the geomancer. They went to find her.’

‘The wolfman did not explain any of this. He had the opportunity to do so, and yet did not. He led us with his answers, so that we would choose to go in this direction, to choose to find the geomancer, choose to knock on her door and ask to see her.’ He pursed his lips. ‘I think we should reconsider.’

They stopped and waited for the others. Mary arrived first.