There was an ancient place of worship nearby, a flat hummock with a magical solar circle marked out by a ring of polished stones inside which, in days gone by, people prayed to gods older than humankind. It was also a burial ground, a cemetery, a necropolis of folk—and also non-folk—the names of whom were long forgotten. In 1150, as part of the fight against heathenism and superstition, the stones were scattered and in their place Bishop Walter of Malonne had built a small wooden church—or rather an oratory, for the surrounding area was a wilderness. The oratory barely lasted a year—it burned down after being struck by lightning, and fire consumed all the subsequent churches built on the site of the ancient necropolis. The fight lasted twenty years until the death of Bishop Walter himself. People began to whisper that it was better not to fall foul of the Old Gods, and the new bishop, Żyrosław, took the only sensible decision: he chose a completely new, distant, prettier and more favourably situated place for the location of the next church. No one prevented the new church from standing there and attracting large congregations, while invisible hands returned the ancient stones to their former positions in the old cemetery. With time, the place was ringed by a circle of stunted, skeletal trees and, in places, a tangled hedge of blackthorn armed with murderous thorns.

The place was bathed in moonlight.

Trotting over to the first stones and the blackthorn hedge, the Wolf suddenly stopped and its hackles rose as though before fladry lines. It sniffed out the stench of the funereal decay which still hung over the hummock, although the dead hadn’t been buried there for centuries. It registered the lodes of ancient magic gathered over the centuries and preventing the enchanted creature from entering. The Wolf shimmered and changed shape. And became a human being. A tall man with eyes the colour of iron.

The cold night air appeared to have set hard. Not a single dry leaf or a single blade of sedge trembled. The silence was deafening.

The sound of steps, a soft grating on the gravel, disturbed the silence. The Wallcreeper passed between the standing stones.

The Iron Wolf moved forward and also entered the circle. The circle came alive at once. Beyond the stones, under them, among them, from the thicket of entangled grass and brushwood, dozens—hundreds—of eyes suddenly flashed like lanterns, lively, twitching and nervous as fireflies. The quiet of the night was filled with a disturbing melody of whispers, a vague murmur of high-pitched, non-human voices.

“They’ve come.” The Wallcreeper gestured with his head. “To see you and me. Two of perhaps the last polymorphs in this part of the world. They saw us shape-shifting. Now they want to watch us kill each other.”

He moved his forearm and hand and a knife slid into his fingers. The nine-inch Toledo blade gleamed in the moonlight.