Born the son of a fisherman in a small provincial port, Rakvir Stagarnik is given the chance to attend school. There he befriends the son of the local ruler, but, having fallen in love with the ruler’s daughter, he is caught with her and has to flee to escape the ruler’s vengeance. With two friends, he heads across the mountains only to be captured by a raiding party of barbarians and taken into slavery. He is badly beaten and forced to haul trees up the hillside near a barbarian fortress. In cold hatred, he makes plans to kill the barbarians and escape to make his fortune in the south. The first volume in the epic Through Fire , Karizhka, is set in a distant planet, not too dissimilar from our own. Richard Hernaman Allen, a former Commissioner of HM Customs & Excise, wrote Through Fire over a period of thirty years.