White Wolf

The story

Skilgannon was the Witch Queen's general. He won her the victory at Perapolis, a triumph so terrible that afterwards he took the Swords of Night and Day, rode out of Naashan and vanished. Three years later he is Brother Lantern, a priest in a remote monastery, and the assassins Queen Jianna sent after him have lost the trail.

The disguise lasts until a mob comes to the monastery and Skilgannon cannot stand aside. After that he cannot stay. The Elder Brother gives him back his swords and asks one favour: that he see a young monk, Braygan, safely to the city of Mellicane. Skilgannon has a purpose of his own as well. He has heard of a temple, ruled by an ageless goddess, where the dead can be brought back, and there is someone he wants back.

On the road he falls in with Druss the Legend, no longer young and a decade or so short of Dros Delnoch, who is trying to rescue a friend and his daughter. The two are badly matched. Skilgannon doubts everything, himself most of all, while Druss decides what is right and does it. They are hunted all the same, by killers in the Witch Queen's pay, by an iron-masked enemy out of Skilgannon's past, and by the demons and beasts of the lands they have to cross. The masked man carries the Swords of Blood and Fire, the legendary blades of which Skilgannon's own are copies.

Jianna is never far away. She wants the swords, and she and Skilgannon have business between them that neither can leave alone. Skilgannon's swords are a burden in their own right, since they feed the bloodlust of whoever carries them. And he dreams, again and again, of a white wolf.

Reading notes

White Wolf appeared nineteen years after Legend and brought back Druss, but the book belongs to Skilgannon, one of Gemmell's more complicated men: a charming, self-loathing soldier capable of acts he cannot forgive. His past with Jianna is filled in as the story goes, and their relationship, part love affair and part war, is the strongest thing in it.

The pairing with Druss is the book's argument. Skilgannon sees grey everywhere and Druss sees very little of it, and Gemmell lets each man's view show up the limits of the other's. The fights are handled with his usual timing. The middle loses momentum, though, and one reviewer felt the balance between action and moralising was off, which is a fair complaint.

Despite the shared nickname, the book has nothing to do with Banelion, the general called the White Wolf in Winter Warriors. It stands on its own, but Druss's scenes carry more weight if you have read Legend, and Skilgannon's story continues, a thousand years later, in The Swords of Night and Day. It is also a chance to see Druss before the siege, still on the road and still taking on other people's trouble.