Sir Dorn Plang is a barrel-chested woman whose old strength remains evident beneath a softened middle and the slight forward pitch of a body that has carried armor too long. Her weather-reddened nose and cheeks look permanently wind-chapped. A faded sash, once blue and now the color of dishwater, bears a row of medals rubbed nearly smooth by years of handling. She keeps a thick-bottomed glass in one hand with the steadiness of a veteran keeping a sword; it holds watered cider, never quite empty. When she walks, she plants her left heel first and lets the right foot drag a fraction, as if crossing an invisible threshold with every step. At rest, she leans her weight against the nearest solid thing, but her eyes keep measuring doors, windows, and the space between people. Unexpectedly for a retired knight, she has a small, fussy hobby of folding paper birds, and leaves them perched on windowsills.

Dorn is warm with strays and hard on bullies, yet she distrusts anyone who calls her a hero. In company she jokes and pours drinks; alone she rehearses old arguments against an empty chair. When someone is frightened, her patience becomes almost tender. When someone abuses authority, she turns blunt and immovable. She wants to be done with war but still arranges every room as if the next one might begin.

Dorn Plang was raised at a roadside tollhouse where her mother mended harness and her father judged disputes with a wooden spoon in hand. She joined the household knights of a small border lord at seventeen, more drawn to steady meals and a cause than to ceremony. Her medals came from years of escort duty, bridge defense, and two ugly border campaigns. The formative change came at the Ford of Low Reeds: ordered to hold a retreat long enough for a noble's wagons to escape, Dorn instead opened the line so a trapped village could flee. The village survived, but her commander died covering the withdrawal, and the court praised her courage while quietly ending her commission. She keeps the sash because it carries both the honor and the accusation. Now retired, she tends a common room at the Bent Ford, a coaching inn named for the river's sharp turn. She sends part of her earnings to the dead commander's widower, Celyn, who believes the story she tells about the Ford. Their friendship is real, but the truth between them is not. Dorn is also trying to stop a former squire, Pádraig, from selling forged claims to her medals to pay off a gambling debt.