Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and emotional abuse.

The Icebound Land starts in medias res with Will, the protagonist, on a Skandian raiding ship alongside Evanlyn, a girl he met in the previous novel. The events of the previous two novels directly lead to the plot in this novel. 

In the first novel in the series, The Ruins of Gorlan, the primary characters are introduced, as well as the antagonist for the first two books: Lord Morgarath, a disgruntled noble from Araluen who has taken over the isolated Mountains of Rain and Night with an army of creatures called Wargals, whom he rules through mind control. Morgarath has also gained control over a group of vicious, apelike hunters called the Kalkara. Will is one of a group of orphans (including Horace, the apprentice knight) who live under the care of Baron Arald in Redmont Castle. On Choosing Day, the orphans are meant to be apprenticed to various guilds, but the Battleschool rejects Will due to his small stature. Will ends up apprenticed to Halt, a reclusive and sardonic King’s Ranger (and the person who brought him to the orphanage after his father died, though Will does not know this). The Rangers are an organization of 50 people, plus apprentices, who serve as the King’s intelligence agency. Will learns archery and stealth, and he bonds with a horse named Tug while repairing his relationship with Horace, who once bullied him. By the end of the first novel, Will has helped defeat the Kalkara, but Morgarath still intends to bring war to Araluen.

 In The Burning Bridge, Halt and Will find Morgarath’s battle plans, and war commences. Will, Horace, and Halt’s former apprentice, Gilan, travel toward the adjoining country of Celtica, joined by a lady’s maid named Evanlyn (the Princess Cassandra in disguise). While pursuing the truth about Morgarath’s battle plans, they discover an army of Wargals (Morgarath’s minions) guarding a large bridge being built by enslaved Celtic miners. If completed, the bridge will allow Morgarath’s armies to trap the King’s armies. Will and Evanlyn burn the bridge, but Skandians, Viking-like raiders, capture them; Horace challenges Morgarath to a single combat and defeats him. Halt is unable to rescue Will from the Skandians and watches from the shoreline, shouting promises to rescue him as he is carried off into enslavement.