Rek

Rek is the second lead of Legend and a deliberate contrast to Druss. He is a former Drenai officer, nearly thirty, who resigned his commission when war began to look likely, and he has spent the years since telling himself, and anyone who will listen, that he is a coward. He is funny at his own expense and more of a romantic than he lets on. The complication is that he is also a baresark, a man whose fear can tip over into a berserk fury he does not trust and would rather nobody saw. Meeting Virae, daughter of the Earl of Dros Delnoch, pulls him north towards the one place he had meant to avoid. Much of the novel's emotional weight rests on Rek: whether a man who expects to break can hold, and what leadership looks like when the leader privately feels he is faking it. A title and a suit of old armour are waiting for him at the fortress. Several later Drenai novels follow his descendants.

Appears in

1. 1Legend (1984)In Gemmell's first novel, an ageing axeman and a reluctant soldier help hold a six-walled fortress against a Nadir army half a million strong.