First and foremost, Waylander is my favorite David Gemmell character.  Sure, he is a fine physical specimen as most of Gemmell's heroes are, but he is smart.  More than that, he is incredibly smart.  Waylander is an assassin and as such has to use his head quite a bit.  He was a man who did some things that cause him to burn with shame.  Yet when the time comes, he steps forward to help save a nation.

Waylander is the ultimate in David Gemmell's often covered theme of redemption.  The assassin known as Waylander had done many things to darken his soul and was teetering on falling into evil.  Then he happens upon a priest being tortured and the amoral, loner existence he had become accustomed to comes to an end.

This book is easily one of my favorites and it is the beginning of a trilogy that ends with my all time favorite David Gemmell book, Hero in the Shadows.

Here is the text from the back of the book:

All of Waylander's instincts had screamed at him to spurn the contract from Kaem the cruel, the killer of nations. But he had ignored them. He had made his kill. And even as he went to collect his gold, he knew that he had been betrayed.

Now the Dark Brotherhood and the hounds of chaos were hunting him, even as Kaem's armies waged war on the Drenai lands, intent on killing every man, woman, and child. The Drenai soldiers were doomed to ultimate defeat, and chaos would soon reign.

Then a strange old man told Waylander that the only way to turn the tide of battle would be for Waylander himself to retrieve the legendary Armor of Bronze from its hiding place deep within a shadow-haunted land. He would be hunted. He was certain to fail. But he must try, the old man commanded--commanded in the name of his son, the king, who had been slain by an assassin...

Waylander was the most unlikely of heroes--for he was a traitor, the Slayer who had killed the king...