What with all of the stops to work out vocabulary and for me to try to articulate my questions, it took us all day to get this far, our conversation punctuated with occasional deliveries of light meals from Thenum. It was pretty plain fare. The breakfast goat was the only meat I saw. I was tempted to break out the boil-in-the-bag stuff I had in my bergen. But my instincts told me to save them for when I needed them, so instead I put up with the pickled vegetables and coarse bread. At least the beer was good. Strong, dark ale, almost stout-like, thick enough I almost needed a knife and fork, but it went down very nicely indeed.

The up-shot was that, by the time we got to the Gazenthlion bombshell, it was well into the night, and Anthelion suggested that we call it a day. I had a decent buzz off the ale, so I was happy to agree. But despite the exhaustion I felt from haphazardly learning a new language on an alien world, my brain decided that it needed to do some serious processing and I lay awake deep into the night, staring at the beams over my head.

I shot a man yesterday. Blew his brains out.

It wasn't the first time, of course. I'd had over a dozen confirmed kills in Afghanistan over three tours, and one Czech sex trafficker, but that wasn't a mission I was allowed to talk about. I'd never lost a night's sleep over a single one, although I'd spent time with a counsellor to talk through my misgivings about not having any guilt. I'd been worried I was a sociopath or something, but he'd done a good job of putting my mind at ease.

Still, the guy I shot yesterday... That was the closest if ever been to a kill by a wide margin. Next closest had been a little over a hundred metres. Longest kill had been nine hundred.

To look in a man's eyes and end his life... He had tried to kill me. Self-defence was the most reasonable response to that scenario. And no one seemed to be holding me accountable for it. Not yet, anyway. But I needed to know.

I got up, climbed up the dark spiral staircase to Anthelion's room and knocked on the door until he grumbled an answer. I opened the door and he looked up at me in surprise, a candle burning by his bed.

'Who man dead?' I asked him.

'Man dead?'

'I kill man. Who?'

He rubbed his eyes and sat up, nodding.

'He was a Paladin, called Dylin,' Anthelion explained between yawns. 'He... I was going to talk about this tomorrow.'

'Can't sleep,' I told him.

He shrugged and rang a bell to wake Thenum, poor bastard. When the young servant appeared at the door, Anthelion ordered wine, then pulled off his nightcap and took a deep breath.

'I earned my name by learning the method the Sea People used to summon monsters,' he explained. I mostly followed the words which needed only a little expansion. 'The method involves... need. The monster that's called is responding to the need of the summoner. But the summoner also has to have lots of information about the kind of monster he wishes to summon. It's very dangerous and complicated.

'If I tried to summon a kerberos - one of the two-headed wolves - it would likely respond to my fear and, without control, it would instantly attack and consume me.

'Or possibly it works attack anything that made me fearful. It's hard to be sure.

'The Sea People had many, many years of practice and I leaned that many of their summoners died during training all the same.

'So I proposed to Gethlyn, Master of Paladins, that, instead of trying to summon monsters to bring against Gazenthlion, I should try to summon a champion.

'After all, I reasoned, what creature do I know more about than humans? And what need do I have more than to see that vile dragon dead?'

I began to see the picture coming together - literally as some of his explanation required yet more scribbles to get across what he was trying to say. His patience with me was endless and his exhausted yawns were many.

'You summoned me?' I asked him. 'I'm the champion?'

He laughed.

'Would you like to be?' he asked, meeting my eyes. 'It isn't that simple. I called and the universe sent you to me. But you aren't a mighty warrior clad in plate armour and wielding a magic sword, which was what Gethlyn and his Paladins were expecting to see. You looked like a filthy tinker - like a traveling salesman who screws my daughter and steals my goat, or vice versa!'

I laughed. I'd been called worse. And given the elaborate clothes off the court, here, it made sense that, to see me in my stinking combats and shaggy ghillie cloak, I didn't look like anyone's image of a champion.

'Dilyn was supposed to... put you down,' said Anthelion. 'Like a lame horse. But... bang!'

Bang, indeed. I'd he'd decided to stab me in the throat, he probably would've succeeded and that would've been the end of me.

'Now Gethlyn wants to know your magic. I teach you. You teach him. He will kill the dragon.'

'And Dylin...?'

'Ryan,' he told me, sadly, 'the people in the castle might be all that is left of us. We are a few thousand from a nation of millions. Every one of us is precious but, at the same time, we have all seen death. A lot of death.'

'Your wife...?'

'It was quick,' he replied, eyes bright with emotion. 'And though Dylin was a fool, he would have died a hundred times over to put an end to Gazenthlion. He probably would have preferred a better death, but if he could know that you will teach your power to Gethlyn, he would be satisfied.'

I stared at him. I had my M4 and pistol with me. They never left my side. The ASVK was still zipped away in its case. I looked down at the carbine in my lap.

'It... doesn't work like that,' I told him.

He patted my knee.

'No,' he agreed. 'It is never that simple. But I called, and the universe sent you. We will work it out.'

'In the morning?'

'Oh, gods, yes please,' he agreed with another yawn, necking the last of his wine. 'In the morning.'

I bade him a good night for the second time and made my way back down to my pallet. And once I got there, even though I now had a thousand more things to think about, I found that my brain had finally had enough and sleep claimed me in an instant.