16. Corwin of Amber
From the Courts of Chaos said:
Borel... the name was familiar... a master of the blade. Stupid, though, I saw. He had forfeited my respect by removing his armor. Battle is not a game, and I had no desire to make myself available to any presumptuous ass who thought otherwise. Especially a skilled ass, when I was feeling beat. If nothing else, he could probably wear me down.
"Now we shall resolve a matter which has long troubled me," he said.
I replied with a quaint vulgarism, wheeled my black, and raced back the way I had come...
"Coward!" he cried. 'You flee combat! Is this the great warrior of whom I have heard so much?"
Corwin and his family are very much like gods in the multiverse. They alone have access to the power of the Pattern, a great cosmological doohickey that allows them to roam all the various worlds of possibility, and endow them with powers beyond those of mortal men.
An amnesiac when we first meet him, we are introduced to this strange world at the same time Corwin re-experiences it. He quickly finds himself moving from a simple attempt on his life to a plot to do nothing less than rewrite the entire structure of the universe- at the expense of everyone currently inhabiting it, of course. Only Corwin has the wherewithal to stop it- and he has to do it largely on his own, because everyone else has a different agenda.
What can I say about Corwin? He's a tough sonofagun. A poet, philosopher, and a fairly self-interested guy. He has been out of the picture so long when we first meet him in Nine Princes in Amber, that it seems like everyone else knows what's going on but him. He's got the world's best poker face, though, and manages to bluff or fight his way through every obstacle that is thrown his way. Not that he's stupid- far from it; he's got to be pretty smart to keep all of his Machiavellian relatives from guessing his own plans.
When it comes to dirty work, he is more than willing to step in the crap with everyone else, and being one of the best swordsmen in the universe (the second or third), he's more than likely to come out smelling like the silver rose that is his symbol. None of that fancy shmancy honor in combat stuff, either. He fights dirty, because survival is the only real goal in combat.
His most admirable trait, perhaps, is his indomitable will. Nothing stops this guy. Not amnesia, blinding, imprisonment- he takes a licking and keeps on ticking. The energizer bunny's just a windup toy; Corwin's the real deal. Of course, it helps that he's got the remarkable regenerative powers of all Amberites.
In the end, though, he's willing to put everything on the line to save his misbegotten family, not to mention the entire cosmos, because that's just the kind of guy he is.
He weaves a really good yarn, too.
Catching my cloak in both hands, I swung it in a reverse-veronica maneuver a second or two before Borel's head and shoulders came abreast of me. It swept over him, drawn blade and all, muffling his head and slowing his arms...
... I caught him just as he had brushed my cloak aside and was struggling to rise. I skewered him where he sat and saw the startled expression on his face as the wound began to flame.
"Oh, basely done!" he cried. "I had hoped for better of thee!"
"This isn't exactly the Olympic Games," I said, brushing some sparks from my cloak.
