Waylander

Waylander is the name Dakeyras took after raiders murdered his wife and children, and it became the name of the most feared assassin in the Drenai lands. The first novel opens soon after his worst contract, the killing of the Drenai king Niallad, with a Vagrian army pouring across the country. A reluctant decision to cut a tortured priest, Dardalion, down from a tree sets him on a road he does not want: a quest into Nadir country for the lost Armour of Bronze, with enemies human and otherwise on his trail. In the Realm of the Wolf finds him ten years on, living quietly in the mountains with his adopted daughter Miriel, until he learns that a contract has been taken out on his own life. Hero in the Shadows finds him rich and greying in the northern duchy of Kydor, where he goes by the Grey Man and where something very old is waking. He is the darkest of Gemmell's leads, and all three books ask whether he can ever be more than the worst thing he has done.

Appears in

1. 1Waylander (1986)The assassin who killed the Drenai king is asked to save the kingdom, by fetching the lost Armour of Bronze from deep in Nadir country.
2. 2Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf (1992)Ten years on, Waylander lives quietly in the mountains with his daughter Miriel, until the assassins' guild takes a contract on his life.
3. 3Hero in the Shadows (2000)An ageing Waylander, living rich and anonymous in Kydor, takes up the crossbow again when the gateway sealing an ancient evil starts to fail.