I was pretty embarrassed, I gotta say. There I am as the so-called "champion", summoned across space and time or whatever to kill a dragon and the first rat that crosses my path gets away.

'Those are good kills,' said Thenum, gesturing at the two dead ones as I re-shouldered my bergen. 'A paladin would've taken much longer.'

Damning with faint praise, I thought. A paladin, I thought, would not have let one escape. I was frustrated and angry. I had nearly got myself and my scout - her name, I finally learned, was Ilyane - killed to no useful purpose and despite the darkness of the tunnels, I could sense from Conor's posture and silence that he felt the test had been failed. He had committed a great deal to the idea that I was the best chance to end Gazenthlion and I couldn't blame him if he was having second thoughts.

'We'll need to be on high alert,' he told everyone, his voice low and tight. 'The third may have been scared away or it might come back - maybe with others.'

Lack of intelligence! I screamed in the privacy of my head as we advanced. In every sense. I should've known better than to go into a close-range engagement without knowing more about their capabilities, or taking more time to judge their locations and plan for contingencies. I had been too bloody complacent about what I could do with my fancy training and advanced weapons and now...

I shook myself off.

I could almost hear the voice of my old platoon commander in my head:

'You're alive, so you can learn. If you can learn, you can get better.'

Yes, boss, I silently told him, wherever he was these days. He'd ditched the Army after getting passed over for major. Last I heard, he'd been moving large sums of money around in complicated ways for people who weren't fit to polish his shoes. But those words had stayed with me and seen me through a few shit-shows along the way. I had made mistakes. I had screwed up. But I could learn. I could do better. At least, this time, no one had been hurt.

And, I thought as we waded onwards, I wasn't the only one who had made a bad call, there. Anthelion had seen, first-hand, what the C8 could do. Thenum knew more about the rat-things. Between them, they could've told me whether a centre-of-mass shot might have been enough to end it quicker and more easily than trying to head-shot everything like a show-off. And Conor didn't have to send just the two of us in alone. We could've set up an ambush and taken them together instead of risking me and Ilyane.

But he needed to see me work - not just the C8, but Ryan Shakespeare, too.

I dimly clocked, as my thoughts spiralled inwards, that there was light up ahead, but I was brought back to full awareness by a noise from Marlinya.

Anthelion's staff briefly glowed once, and she went quiet again.

'That's the last time that will work,' he said. 'We don't have long until she'll be awake, rested and very annoyed indeed.'

'We're nearly out,' replied Conor. 'We've time to make it a good distance from the Citadel before we have to let her go.'

Sure enough, ten minutes later we could see daylight at the end of the tunnel and we soon reached the iron gate at its end. There was a cluster of obstacles and crude traps, all geared towards keeping an invader out rather than us in, so they were negotiated without incident and Ilyane quickly managed the ancient lock on the gate, pushing it open with a brutal squeal of rusted metal. From the look of it, as I passed, I wondered if a few good kicks would've been sufficient.

The mouth of the tunnel poured the waste of the Citadel out into a putrescent waterfall that tumbled across slime-encrusted rocks into a foul-smelling swamp. But the local flora clustered tight overhead and across the water until it almost looked like it might be solid underfoot. But I had negotiated the Sennybridge terrain often enough not to take that at face value.

Our descent was cautious and clumsy and we nearly dropped Marlinya several times but, somehow, got her to the foot of the slope without incident. The land was dense with decidous trees, here at the foot of the mountain where the water was draining away from a gentle slope, with wide, flat leaves that threw a deep shade across the whole ares and it was clear, as we moved away from our exit point, that we would be staying under cover. Wading through the swamp we each took turns carrying Marlinya and it was on my third rotation in that I saw her starting to come to.

'We've got a conscious paladin, here,' I called to Conor and Anthelion as her eyes opened and blinked rapidly, trying to clear gunk from her eyes.

'Where am I?' she demanded, pulling at her restraints. 'What have done with me!'

'Stop wriggling!' I told her, fighting to keep the litter from toppling as she struggled. At the front, Ilyane dropped to one knee in the muck to avoid dropping it entirely. 'When we reach solid ground we'll let you out.'

'What are you doing?' she retorted, although she obeyed and stopped fighting her restraints. 'Do you flee?'

'We're going to kill your dragon,' I said, as casually as I could manage. Ilyane nodded wordless thanks to me and hoisted Marlinya back up and we pressed on. I could see what looked like a low rise ahead, between the sprawling roots of the trees that threatened at every step to trip us, and I was hoping that would be our way back to dry land when we could finally be done with carrying Xena, Warrior Princess, here.

'You're lying!' she growled, but Anthelion had dropped back to us, now and rested a hand on her arm. She looked up at him, uncertain.

'We're not, Marlinya,' he told her. 'Gethlyn is fixated on being the one to stop Gazenthlion. In his obsession he would take from us the best chance we have,'

'Gethlyn is our best chance!' she retorted, angrily. 'Gethlyn and the paladins will strike the evil beast down!'

'You weren't at the fall of Larinmont, Marlinya,' said Anthelion, sadly. 'Gazenthlion tore through the paladins there like paper. Zaynek stood like a demigod before her, but she ripped his arm from his body, tore open his armour and bit off his head in less time than it takes me to draw breath.'

'No!' she insisted. 'Zaynek fought her nearly to a standstill! Gethlyn saw it!'

'Gethlyn saw nothing,' said Anthelion, 'and those of us who did he swore to secrecy.'