A few months after the events of Nicnevin, Mack and Rowan have got married and it is mid-winter in the Scottish Highlands. Kit Hardwicke is suddenly faced with two upsets ? Robbie Ferguson abruptly announces that he is going away for six months and Kit cannot come with him. A few days later, he discovers that their friend Marcus Dixon is missing, presumed lost at sea. Mack and Rowan insist that Kit accompanies them on their honeymoon rather than moping around at home, and they find themselves in Argentina. Inevitably, they end up in the midst of a local revolution orchestrated by Robbie and the very much alive Dixon, accompanied by his wife Laura. There are dogs, aeroplanes, mysterious legends of a native population that comes from very close to home. There is an evil mine owner. Robbie adopts numerous disguises. Things are complicated by the fact that Laura has foretold that Kit must never step foot on a battlefield again, or he will die. Robbie and Dixon send him away to play amateur archaeologist, and he discovers agreeable things about Robbie's past life, and makes an important identification of an ancient carving that has never been fully understood before.