Wenek

Wenek arrives with Terleman and Azar on scouting duty, reporting on Tudry (ten thousand gurvani) and Glandon (fifty thousand). "Captain, I'm as much of an optimist as anyone, but even I don't think that would work." He turns out to be a former Pearwoods bastard slave of Clan Shorell:

Captain, I was a slave when I lived there. A bastard slave, the lowest of the low, in a land that's already considered the lowest of the low.

His chief sold him to a wizard in Flendon Town when he witched the winds.

Despite that history, Minalan bullies him into raising the Pearwoods clans for Timberwatch. Wenek scries the enemy ("at least nine stones in that lot"), boxes his clansmen up in the Pearwoods during the main battle, and later leads Castali heavy cavalry through hidden Pearwoods passes to flank the gurvani's eastern position. Receives irionite from Minalan. Described throughout as "the shortish Alshari warmage" and "the portly warmage." Captures witchstones in County Locare with Horka and Delman. Sarcastic, gruff, hard-drinking, cheerfully self-deprecating.

Wenek attends a garden gathering at Sire Forandal's Robinwing estate with Taren during Minalan's post-Timberwatch reward tour. Now Magelord of the Pearwoods, granted the barony by the Crown for his Timberwatch service. He describes his rule as wetnursing:

The clans all look to me now. Calling myself lord seems unfair, more of a wetnurse breaking up fights between brats in the yard.

Collects tribute in "spirits or pears or ham, usually. Different organization."

Supplies Minalan with Pearwoods pear brandy "raw as a drunken whore on your tongue." Heavy drinker, crude, cheerfully self-deprecating, farts while thinking. Appearance:

Both seemed in excellent health, and from their dress they were quite prosperous. Wenek seemed to be fleshing out under his dark green robes, which complemented the several golden rings he wore.

Already visibly going to seed.

Major supporting role. Defends a Tudry-area town in the opening:

Wenek lived for causing pain and suffering, death and dismemberment through artful expressions of magic.

Referred to as "good ol' Wenek the Portly." At the Magic Convocation Minalan gives him fifty pounds of pure white snowstone gravel and receives from him "a sheaf of weirwood staves" as a gift. Arrives at Gavard "with a wild looking troop of hillmen from the Pearwoods, including a few semibarbaric warmagi he'd been cultivating."

Assigned to Third Team (with Sire Cei, Taren, and ten volunteers) for the Anthatiel raid. At the ruined tower he casts his signature existential-terror spell on a thousand goblins:

Try pure existential terror. That should make attacking them easier.

Lorcus calls him "one devious bastard." Fights through the dragon and Mycin Amana rearguard with his mace alongside Sire Cei says:

Concussive blasts went off behind me, telling me that Wenek was in my vicinity.

Drives the barges retreat, shouting: "Will you all get in the godsdamned barge?"

Receives Pentandra's Yule message as Baron of the Pearwoods. Rides with Azar and unleashes "spectacularly deadly spells" against hobgoblin legions in the field. Tyndal quips about eating "until we're as fat as Wenek," making his rotundity a running joke across the warmage cohort.

Brings reinforcements from Azar's redoubt through the Waypoint at Olum Seheri, with his mace and "a few of my friends from Azar's redoubt," including Gerendren the Grim, Caswallon the Fox, Golvod of Timaria, and Astyral. Attacks the Dradrien rear with a "powerful cloud of arcane lightning that laced its way through the highly-conductive Dradrien infantry, causing them to jerk and dance painfully." Trades mace blows with a Dradrien. "Wenek was laughing madly as his round face surveyed the incredible damage his spells dealt." Invents the Hellrain spell Minalan uses later, heated flying gravel that explodes mid-fall.

Tyndal's affectionate recollection:

he'd always been fond of the gruff warmage, since he'd taught him some of the nastiest spells back at Boval Castle. Wenek's specialty was offensive magics, and he proudly boasted he was the most offensive mage in the Kingdom.

Later in Vorone with his arm in a sling from a Nemovort duel, carousing:

I love this place! Wenek and I brought a bunch of the boys along to spend some of our pay.

Inducted by Sire Cei into the newly formalized knighthood order alongside the other old guard. "I, myself, have been cursed with incredible humility."

Leads Pearwoods tribesmen down from the hills (unusually, since they do not normally march out of sight of their hills) to Vanador, becoming Minalan's chief field lieutenant at the Battle of the Sudden Fortress against Gaja Katar. "Wenek used what command over them he had and convinced five hundred thick-looking barbarian tribesman to follow his court of warmagi to assist the Spellmonger, as much to convince them of his own grandeur than out of a sense of personal leadership."

At the Sudden Fortress, operates alongside Taren and Ruderal. Opens a three-foot-deep trench across a hundred feet of the goblin line "producing a staggering number of broken goblin ankles." Dismantles the gurvani formation with sadistic glee; when his counterspell forces an urgulnosti shaman to clap hands to head in pain, he grins. Deploys green fire, arcane bolts, berserker fields, and razor-wire energy that sends gurvani brains fountaining across the field. Eagerly volunteers as parley emissary (Minalan declines):

If that walking corpse tries anything, Min, I'll jam my warstaff so far up his arse that his eyes glow green, for a change.

"It takes a special kind of mad to be a warmage, and be a good one." His motto is effectively: "I like war!" Massive shoulders set his belly rolling under his armor, at his fattest and happiest.

One of Minalan's southern barons summoned to council against Shakathet. "Oh, I'll keep the lads at home. It's wartime." Rides with a Pearwoods force to Forgemont and fends off the siege:

They just keep coming. They come, and me and the lads knock them down.

His "lads" (roughly a dozen cultivated warmagi from his Pearwoods court, recruited "using bribery and the charms of the Pearwoods maidens as a lure") had already eliminated most of the gurvani's artillery before reinforcements arrived. Warns Minalan about bad stories of Olum Seheri from his wounded men. More thoughtful and strategic here than in prior volumes, though still gleeful about killing.

Larask is Minalan's nephew — "Ladra's oldest boy" — whose rajira newly emerged in the weeks before the Mad Mage crisis. Captured by Mycin Amana's Enshadowed agents and rescued during the Darkfaller Raid: "Larask seemed no worse for wear, under all the dirt and grime. But there was no blood. The lad looked up at me a dazed expression on his face. 'I had no idea that you'd gotten rajira!' I said. 'This was an unusual way for me to find out.'"

Larask blushes: "It was supposed to be a surprise." Minalan says:

I find myself surprised. From what I understand, you have a full measure of rajira. When things settle down a bit, we shall discuss finding you a suitable apprenticeship or send you to an Academy.

Post-rescue, Minalan offers him the third-apprentice seat (after Tyndal, Rondal, and Ruderal):

Come in, come in, Larask. Have a seat. I wanted a word with you.

"So, what about my future?" asks Larask. A twelve-year-old boy with a full measure of rajira, thrust into the heart of the Spellmonger's household just as the war enters its final stretch.

Hand-picked by Minalan for the infiltration strike on Mycin Amana at Darkfaller Castle. Teleports to Minalan via the Snowflake's portal bearing an Enshadowed irionite sphere. "I'll bring my mace. I'm as giddy as a maiden on her wedding night. I like the hard way."

Slaughters four maragorku and kills an Enshadowed warrior atop the central keep with a single arcane bolt; brains two Enshadowed warriors from behind in Tavard's throne room. Destroys Mycin Amana's thaumaturgical bluestone-and-irionite array at Minalan's direction, producing the catastrophic explosion that disables every magical being in the chamber and knocks him unconscious. Minalan hauls him down the keep stairs on his shoulder in full armor: "Ishi's tits, Wenek had put on weight." Moments later, cleared, he slams and stabs a stair-climbing gurvan, fights Mycin Amana's giant spider alongside Minalan ("Too bad we don't have a really, really big boot"), and loses his left leg in the campaign, a life-changing injury.

Recovering at Lilastien's hospital at Henga for three months after Darkfaller, an amputee adjusting poorly. Minalan visits, smuggles in a bottle of Pearwoods brandy, packs his pipe, and gets him "in much-improved spirits." Raw, angry at his loss:

About time you came to visit. I like war! It's what I'm good at! Old Wenek? He's ruined, now! The only thing I was ever good at was fighting and killing, and right now a drunken goblin could knock me down by accident.

Azar quotes him in the field:

I am just sorry Wenek missed this. This is his kind of battle, where excess is rewarded. He's going to be so jealous.

Lilastien plans to fit him with a "properly functioning prosthetic" rather than just a peg. "That man plagues me and my staff more than anyone else in our care!" she complains. Appearance:

He looked healthy, overall, until you saw his leg. In fact, he looked as if he'd slimmed down and started taking care of himself better. But that hadn't improved his mood, much.

Bandaged stump propped up; missing left leg.