Her district commander, Lord Wyldon, has chosen not to place her in control of a border post or a portion of the army like the other knights, so she's certain that he wishes to keep her—who, as a woman, he views as inferior in combat to males—out of fighting.

In her work at the camp Kel names Haven, she receives help in the shape of her old friends Neal and Merric, the horses Peachblossom and Hoshi, the dog Jump, and her personal sparrow flock, as well as from a mixed myriad group of others: the Wildmage Daine; Daine's lover, the great mage Numair Salmalin; Neal's own father, Duke Baird of Queenscove; Kel's former knight-master Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie's Peak; men of the King's Own (including Kel's friend and Neal's cousin Sergeant Domitan of Masbolle); convict soldiers who have been given the choice to fight in the army or to die at hard labor; several hundred disillusioned refugees who have received too many empty promises from nobles; smugglers; and a young, orphaned boy with wild magic for horses named Tobe.

Before the war began, she was given a task by the Chamber of the Ordeal: to find and destroy the mage whose necromancy creates the giant, swift-moving, deadly metallic machines from the souls of children, known to the Tortallans as "killing devices."

However, as the summer wears on and the war intensifies, events move to put that perverted mage and his conscienceless war-leader in Kel's path, and at last her resolve is tested, and she and all of Tortall find out if she is truly worthy of her shield.

After burying the few dead at Haven, Kel tricks her guards into returning to Lord Wyldon without her, and begins what she believes will be a long and harrowing journey into enemy territory.