It soon became apparent to me that what I had taken to be some sort of mountain citadel was more like a city in its own right. The tower in which I had arrived was Anthelion's home and, perhaps, laboratory.

As we left, he was careful to secure the door with a lock that I swore briefly flashed with blue light before we began making our way to... Well, I had no idea where we were going, despite his babbling. But he certainly had a sense of purpose to his stride as we made our way through a tumbling, ramshackle community filled with people.

Children were everywhere and rarely under any sort of adult oversight. But there were adults aplenty, as well. We passed a woman sitting on the stoop of a hut, furiously scrubbing clothes in cold, filthy water. There was a group of men and women arguing, surrounded by a small army of goats - or something that looked like goats, anyway. I saw shopkeepers without shops: just boxes of indeterminate goods under rough tarpaulins and expressions of cheer plastered awkwardly over their fear.

The fear was everywhere, once I knew to look for it. Voices raised in anger. The too-tight embraces of a parent. The frantic, aimless play of children.

I had seen this behaviour before. I had seen these faces before. Not these exact faces, of course, but they might as well have been for all that I could understand and sympathize with the problems they were facing. These people were refugees. They were here - in this castle, up this mountain, turning its passageways and courtyards into makeshift homes - because someone or something had driven them from wherever they had been before.

I had zipped the ASVK away into its weather bag, and strapped it to the side of my bergen. As we walked, I held my M4 loosely in two hands. There was a magazine on the carbine, but I'd not cocked it. Safety was on anyway, because good weapon discipline starts at home. No one reacted to the rifle the way they would have done at home. Even in Basra, wandering through a bustling market on a Thursday morning, you'd see eyes twitch towards the weapons as you passed. Just because it was normal didn't mean it wasn't still scary. But here, I might as well have been carrying a shopping bag, they were so uninterested.

Not that there was no interest in my person, though. Anthelion drew looks. Compared to the people we were making our way past, he looked well fed and healthy. His clothes, despite their brownness, were clean, of good quality and elaborately decorated. And there was something about the way he held himself.

Compared to their dejected body language and expressions of fear and anger, he held himself calmly. There was almost a spring in his step.

But whilst he drew their attention first, any look at him quickly slid its way to me. In my filthy combats, ghillie cape, bergen and webbing, I must have cut a strange figure, like someone dressed up for a play or a wild man from the forests, if they had such things.

But for all my outlandish appearance, no one's stare lingered for long. Again, it was the bearing of the refugee. They learned to focus on their own problems, first, and not to get distracted by others.

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We came to a huge gate of black wood that filled an archway clearly designed to communicate that "in here" and "out there" were two different places. Anthelion lifted his staff to rap on the wood next to a metal grille. He turned to me and smiled reassuringly. But as we waited, unanswered, his smile faded and he rolled his eyes, lifting his staff again

"Parthio!' he yelled, banging harder on the door. "Zemni o h'runta!'

After a few moments, the grille slid open and someone beyond it blocked the light and grumbled out at him.

'Anthelion!' snapped my host. 'Anthelion Zureus, Parthio, dlokin das!'

From his tone of voice I realized I'd learned a third word in addition to "ma" ("I am" or, possibly, "my name is") and "kip" ("yes"). I privately squirreled away "dlokin" as "a bad name to call someone".

The sound of bolts being drawn scratched and thumped through the wood and it... opened a tiny, smaller door at the bottom of the huge gate, that pulled itself wide to admit us. Anthelion clambered through and I followed, manoeuvring my kit through the tight gap.

On the other side of the gate was an empty courtyard, in size not unlike the one we had left but in contrast to the packed and busy space outside, this one was empty but for the man with whom Anthelion was now arguing.

He was a small guy, barely five feet tall, but with broad, powerful shoulders. He looked like he would have trouble fitting through the little door, himself. With a deep, gruff voice he angrily refuted Anthelion, poking him in his chest with a thick finger, but my host gestured in my direction and the little man turned his ugly face my way.

He had an enormous head, with wide-spaced eyes and a big, flattened nose above rope-thick that framed a broad mouth full of slab-like teeth made all the more horrible when it spilt open and he started to laugh. Then he turned back to Anthelion, slapping him on the arm and poking him more.

His laughter subsided and, wiping his eyes on the back of his sleeves, the creature led us away from the gate. Anthelion turned to me with an apology on his face but as I had no idea what was going on, what he was apologizing for made no sense to me at all. Still, I followed, bemused, as we passed neatly-tended flowerbeds and ascended a wide, curving stone staircase to a pillared portico that itself led to yet another set of doors. They were more people here. Very different to the ones outside the gate, they moved in small groups of two or three, about equally made up of men and women, and wore clothes that looked like something from a historical drama. I had thought Anthelion's black robe was elaborately decorated, but these men and women were adorned like birds of paradise in long dresses and robes with wide, fur-trimmed sleeves and a huge array of colourful headwear.

The creature from the gate stomped his way through the genteel crowd, who ignored him, but awarded Anthelion and me very much the same kind of scrutiny as their lower class counterparts outside, although the reaction to my appearance was, if anything, even more hostile. But no one stopped us as the creature pushed open the set of doors at the far side of the portico. And these were doors. Not as tall as the gates that had admitted us, but ten feet tall, reinforced with metal and decorated with what I had at first taken for paint but now, as I drew close, could see was actually inlaid metal. It may not have actually been gold, but it certainly looked like it to my inexpert eyes. But for all their magnificence and the elaborate impression of the portico and the over-dressed crowd at its feet, the building to which those same does granted us admission was, by every reasonable measures, a fortress.