A young man could be seen laying unconscious inside an old tent. This lad was called Dartelo Vilruhn. His hair was a light chestnut color and underneath his closed eyelids a pair of green eyes were darting to and fro. His clothes were frayed and even torn in spots, covered in all sorts of dirt and grass stains. His head was bandaged and the linens, that had not been changed in some time, were stained crimson. He was one among many. The tent was littered with cots upon cots filled with injured men. Unlike most of them, Mavry and Lilia's son was neither short nor frail.

Dartelo was born in the Holy Pietra Empire. Alas, it was an empire only in name. The former behemoth of a country had slowly dwindled in both strength and lands. In the last couple of centuries it had been besieged from every direction by its rivals. Pietra's Empire had once spanned across most of the north-eastern reaches of Estoch. All that remained of its former glory was a small piece on the north tip of the continent. Dartelo's family lived at its southernmost border.

His eyelids felt as if they were weighed down with iron, but gradually he managed to open them. He slowly looked around, clearly suffering. Moving was pain. Breathing was pain. He had a throbbing headache like none before.

'Holy Saint,' he though as he weakly tried to sit up. 'What has happened to me? Where am I?'

A young woman noticed his vain attempt and made her way towards him. She was dressed in clothes that might have once been a resplendent hue of white, but at the moment they were gray and frayed at the ends. She wore a white veil that hid most of her features, but Dartelo still noticed that she had braided auburn hair. The sleeves of her robe were bloodstained and one could faintly discern the brand of an apprentice on her left wrist. She was diminutive in stature and looked frail.

'Was she the one that saved me?' Dartelo thought.

The healer's apprentice did not hurry at all and neither her gaze nor her expression held the faintest touch of warmth. She came up to the cot on which the boy was laid, standing a bit to the side as if she was afraid of catching a disease. She kept her hands behind her back and inspected him from top to bottom.

"What is your name and where are you from?" she asked slowly, the words hanging in the air.

"I am Tarum," he lied, as his uncle had taught him. The voice that sounded out was so hoarse it startled him. All he could think about was water. "I do not have a home, I travel from place to place with caravans. Thank you for saving me, blessed healer."

The young woman's brow furrowed and a look of contempt appeared on her face.

"Your thanks are neither wanted nor accepted, heathen," she said with evident disgust, despite her heavy accent.

The young man was completely shocked as he watched the woman leisurely walk away and then talk to a couple of guards that were stationed at the tent's entrance. He looked around and at this moment he finally realized that it was not his own weakness that prevented him from standing up. A couple of lengths of rope had been tied around his feet and arms. He squirmed for a few moments, but try as he might, the knots were not tied lightly. He finally accepted that the ropes were too great of an obstacle and relaxed.

'What did Uncle always say? Ah, forsaken minions of hell, I should have listened more! Okay, calm down Dart, take it one step at a time,' the boy consoled himself. His eyes roamed across the tent and he tried to take in as much information about his surroundings as possible.

'It's just a normal tent, I could probably crawl underneath one of the sides as easy as pie, but didn't Uncle always say never to do anything without getting as much information as possible? I'll just keep lying through my teeth until I can come up with a good plan.'

The healer's apprentice returned with two men in tow. One was a guard that had close-cut hair and a grizzled beard. His armor was dented in places and while his sword shined, its blade was chipped. One could tell that while his gear was old and worn out, it was obvious that the old man had kept it in as good shape as possible. Next to him stood a tall man who curiously looked at Dartelo, but once his gaze landed on the ropes that tied the boy down, there was a flicker of anger in his eyes.

'Maybe he's the main healer? His clothes do look like those of the apprentice,' Dartelo pondered.

The three talked among each other in a foreign tongue that sounded rough and curt, unlike Dartelo's native language - Pietranese. It almost looked as if a troupe was acting out an exaggerated argument, but of course, there was no chance for this to just be an elaborate joke. The argument lasted for close to a dozen minutes, with the apprentice and the guard on one side and the healer on the other. The healer, that had looked like a kindhearted man only a few moments ago, had bellowed and yelled for a good half of the time, not even letting the other side speak until he ran out of breath. In the end, the woman and the soldier stepped away unwillingly, while the tall man edged closer and crouched next to Dartelo's cot.

"My apprentice tells me that you said your name is Tarum and that you are a wandering barbarian. She doesn't really believe you and neither does the guard. They both think you're from the Kingdom of Heathens, as they call it," the tall man said. "Honestly it doesn't really matter that much, they'd treat you the same way even if you were the Crown Prince of the Bessel Empire himself. My name is Dzherbon and I am the Battle Healer of this regiment."

Dartelo looked at him in a daze, going over what he had just said. 'Regiment? Battle Healer? Crown prince? What in the nine heavens is he going on about!?'

"We found you after the fighting had ended, boy. You were almost dead, lying unconscious at the river's bank, about half a day away from here. You must have taken a very heavy knock to the head. Do you remember anything?" Dzherbon asked him.

It took Dartelo a few moments to finally crawl out of the mental stupor he had entered. He looked at the tall man and realized that unlike his so-called apprentice, his skin did not have a bronze sheen to it and his hair was fair. 'Wait a second, he doesn't have an accent!'

"Are you from Pietra?" he asked sheepishly.

"No, but I know their tongue. I am a mercenary from the Western Tribes. The Iorissian Kingdom was in need of healers and their coin is no worse than any other, so here I am," the tall man said dryly. "I shall ask you once again, do you remember anything?"

The young man grimaced for a bit before answering, "A little, blessed healer Dzherbon. May I ask for some water? It is quite a long story."

The sturdy healer immediately croaked out something that could have been a sentence, but to Dartelo it sounded like a wolf crunching bones. A female voice answered in the same manner and soon the apprentice came back with a clay jug in hand. She looked with unhidden anger at Dzherbon, before placing the jug next to his feet and storming away. Dzherbon snickered at his apprentice before picking up the jug with his left hand. It looked as if it weighed at least a good twenty kilograms.

"Lean to the side, boy, and drink some before they change their minds. I may be a Battle Healer, but I'm as much of an outsider to them as you are." Dzherbon complained as Dartelo turned his head to the side and raised it as much as possible. His lips barely reached the massive jug's rim.

The water was hot and its taste was not pleasant at all. But the small trickle that Dartelo gulped incessantly was lifesaving. After a whole minute of drinking, Dzherbon pulled away the jug.

"Too much isn't good for you after you've went without for so long. Now tell me, boy, what happened?"

Dartelo leaned his head back onto the cot and closed his eyes as he began recalling the last things he could remember before he woke up to this wretched situation.