I Read Books: Waylander

 

Waylander

The Drenai lands have been overrun by Vagrians, their king killed by the mysterious assassin Waylander. Five outlaws are torturing a priest when they are interrupted by a man of supreme killing skill, who uses a small but powerful double crossbow. They have made the mistake of stealing his horse. He kills them and, despite his better judgment, releases the priest and helps him recover.

The priest is Dardalion who is a mystic with magical powers, sensitive enough that he does not eat meat. The man is Waylander, the prince of assassins, known as Soul Stealer by the Nadir, and once a soldier until his family were killed. Saving the priest awakens Waylander’s conscience, while Dardalion accepts the inevitability of violence and the need to act.

This sets off a chain of events. Waylander and Dardalion rescue a woman and children, taking them to the forest of Skultik, where Drenai forces hold out. There Dardalion meets other priests of the Source. There is a disagreement, as most of them wish to keep to the ways of non-violence, despite being assailed on the astral plane by Vagrian Hounds Of Chaos, dark wizard-knights. Twenty Nine priests chose to join Dardalion, not to fight and kill physically, but to combat evil mystically, creating The Thirty, a group of fighting priests we know will re-appear again and again from other Drenai novels.

Karnak, a Drenai general, has a plan to sneak reinforcements into the last fortress standing, one that is holding back the main Vagrian army and their prince Kaur. He takes the Thirty with him, to hold back the Vagrian sorcery. But the only way to rally a relief force is to recover the famous Bronze armour of the Old King. And the only man to find it is Waylander, who has a bounty on his head, as Kaur wants to tie up loose ends from hiring him to kill the king.

Waylander is a darker protagonist than the flawed ones that Gemmell likes to use; his problem is not doubts or self-centredness. He doesn’t kill people from ambush because he’s afraid, he does it because it’s efficient. He went on a roaring rampage of revenge twenty years ago, turned to being a killer for hire to pay for it and when he got his last enemy had nothing to turn to and no way back. A path that ends when he kills the king of the Drenai and has everyone’s hand turned against him. And then, after all that, he’s touched by the grace of the Source and turns all those terrible skills to a better cause.

Waylander’s incredulous at his heroic turn; Dardalion meanwhile takes his bloody and violent one through logic. The Source is love and compassion, so the priests do not take up arms, keeping watch and healing. Yet when evil is abroad is that enough? If there’s going to be violence anyway, is it good to stand aloof from it? The flaws to the argument, the paradoxes lead Dardalion and his Thirty into the heart of the war where they will inevitably die, but before that maybe they can do some good.

This was 1986, so before the idea of Grimdark had been named. So perhaps because of this the idea of redemption is always present. Waylander’s killed a lot, and for money, but not women and children, and thanks to being the world’s most expensive assassin, generally people who were no better than him,  often worse. You don’t gain enemies willing to spend that much by being nice. And there are many worse people in the world. And if we aren’t willing to offer Waylander the benefit of the doubt, why do we give Dardalion any slack? He’s a killer too. Reluctant? Sure, but that’s where Waylander started.

Anyway, though it’s often put forward in very simple terms, characters discussing the debate rather clearly, there’s some actual meat to the arguments. And on top of it some really good and clever action sequences, and characters having to choose what they’re willing to risk. Top notch heroic fantasy.

Read This: Solid fantasy adventure with more to chew on than most
Don’t Read This: Bad people do a lot of killing while worse things go on around them