[Einherjar] The Locked Tomb: Commander Wake

Prepare to meet one of sci-fi and fantasy's greatest badasses

Einherjar

Commander Wake from Tamsyn Muir's The Locked Tomb is one of my favourite characters from across speculative fiction, in part because she embodies the character archetype of unrelenting, awe-inspiring badass, or as I'm calling them, Einherjar: warriors carried to Valhalla by Valkyries in Norse mythology, with the name itself translating to "army of one," "those who fight alone."

As that definition would suggest, these characters are defined by their capacity for overwhelming violence. This is often true to such an extent that when allied with the protagonists, their mere presence and agency in a scene ensures the physical safety of other characters (potentially making their absence feel inherently dangerous). Conversely, an antagonistic einherjar shatters any conception of safety and order, often necessitating a chaotic escape.

However, I think of einherjar as having inverted plot armour; they will believably survive just about anything, right up until the plot decides their time is done. Some examples of characters who I'd call einherjar (who may or may not eventually get posts of their own) include: Boromir from The Lord of the Rings, Tain Shir from The Masquerade, Sigrud from The Divine Cities, Iren from The Books of Babel, Snorri from The Red Queen's War and, for a minor curveball, Jayne from Firefly.

Commander Wake, by abominablebebop

For the sake of brevity I won't be re-explaining anything from my previous The Locked Tomb articles – on John/Alecto and Lyctors & Gender Dysphoria Part 1 and Part 2 – so consider reading those first if you haven't already. My discussion today will have major spoilers for Harrow the Ninth.

Blood of Eden

I briefly mentioned the revolutionary group Blood of Eden at the end of my previous post, whose fundamental purpose is the destruction of John's Nine Houses, necromancy and everything it has touched; to liberate humanity from its evil undead overlords. (It's utterly fascinating to consider the ethical tension between John's actions and Blood of Eden's – who many speculate descended from the trillionaires who barely escaped John's wrath.)

Commander Wake personifies Blood of Eden's guile, violence, perseverance and disdain for necromancy. Her full name, in the Blood of Eden custom, is: Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity (referencing Shakespeare's Henry V, New Zealand's national anthem and Eminem's "Lose Yourself"; I'll write a little more about this when I get to Muir's worldbuilding and style). John, being John, mockingly refers to her as "Commander Wake Me Up Inside."

I'd read entire books about Wake; unfortunately we know very little about her legendary leadership, strategy and charisma within Blood of Eden beyond the fact that, as we see in Nona, they are still reeling and uncoordinated two decades after losing her. Instead it was her final personal actions that shaped the course of The Locked Tomb.

Commander Wake, by MidnightCrows

While technically unconfirmed, I firmly believe that Wake hatched a plan to use the surviving lyctors against John; beyond simply removing his greatest allies, they have resources and insights Blood of Eden could only dream of. At some point Wake succeeded in making contact, likely through forming a relationship with Gideon the First's compartmentalized cavalier Pyrrha Dve (see my previous post).

Two lyctors (Augustine and Mercymorn) theorize that a child of John's would be able to enter the eponymous Locked Tomb, sealed to all others by powerful blood wards, and recruit Wake to attempt an infiltration. They supply her with John and Mercymorn's genetic material (ten thousand years together have led to complicated relationships between God and his Saints) to create a key in an external womb, but the ova die and Wake elects to carry the child to term herself in order to see the mission through.

The psychological (body?) horror of this choice is unparalleled in my mind. Yet Wake knows that this is the only chance in her mortal lifetime to expose John's dearest secret, so she carries her enemy's child for nine months alone and on the run with the plan of sacrificing it to enter the Tomb. Her hunter, Saint Gideon the First, catches up to her at the very end and she chooses to save her newborn daughter's life rather than her own; in hopes that someone will one day find and use the key.

Wake & Gideon, by monakisss

The daughter's story must wait for another post though, because mere death isn't enough to stop a badass like Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead.

The Sleeper

Similar to how Palamedes haunts his own skull fragment until he reconnects with Camilla, Wake haunts first her body, then her daughter’s sword, before finally moving into the mind of Harrowhark Nonagesimus. What’s awe-inspiring is that Palamedes, a trained necromancer using specialized techniques, is said to have pulled off a minor miracle by staying in place for eight months; Wake has no training, only sheer dedication and willpower, and remains for over eighteen years.

Harrow the Ninth sees Wake sowing discord across the Mithraeum (John and the lyctors' secret fortress on the other side of the observable universe), through both the corpse of lyctor Cytherea and within Harrow's muddled memories. In both plots she is an agent of mysterious horror, since we don't find out about her until the end of the novel. In the physical world we only see hints of the corpse's movements (for which the lyctors are happy to blame each other) until Wake nearly succeeds in incinerating Gideon/Pyrrha, presumably looking for revenge on her murderous ex(es).

Commander Wake / The Sleeper, by notedchampagne

Within Harrow's corrupted memories of her time in Canaan House (the plot of Gideon the Ninth) Wake similarly takes the form of a stalking, murderous, not-so-sealed corpse; this time wearing the faceless hazard suit in which she died. Her goal is presumably to possess Harrow, now a mostly-functional lyctor, and then cause enough chaos that John and the Saints fall to their greatest, most horrifying enemy.

Harrow musters a veritable army of spirits (including the greatest swordsman to ever live) to exorcise Wake, who fights ferociously with an incongruous arsenal of guns against the spells and blades of her necromantic foes.

In life she must have had few, if any, equals. Her people — whoever they had been— must have cherished her as their finest champion. She was a prodigious fighter: fast, brutal, ruthless in exploiting advantages, terrifying in her force and aggression. She had gained a wicked-looking knife with a serrated edge in her left hand, balancing the baton in her right, and she struck with it at eyes, groin, or anywhere else she could reach. The heavy haz suit did not seem to slow her at all, and she had a catlike agility in keeping with her earlier handspring; she kept swerving her body away from strikes and mixing elbow jabs, knee strikes, and even kicks into her overall assault. There was no trace in her of the beribboned show fighter: she fought like she wanted to kill you and she hoped it would hurt. – Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

The Sleeper, by wubbelwubbwubb

Wake is ultimately banished by Harrow just in time to also be blasted out of Cytherea's head by Pyrrha (acting as Gideon). Is she conclusively, permanently dead? Some fans certainly speculate that she's not, and it's hard to argue why it should be impossible for her to cling on this time when she did it so well before. I lean towards her being truly dead, in part because as I discussed earlier with the idea of reverse plot armour, einherjar feel uniquely vulnerable to losing their sublime fortitude precisely when the author decides their time has come.

Valhalla

Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity, Blood of Eden's Commander and the greatest mortal threat to John Gaius in ten thousand years, must rank among speculative fiction's greatest badasses. It is a shame that we really only see and feel her ghost in The Locked Tomb, but in a way that might make her showing even more impressive.

I truly appreciate how Muir characterized Wake, both in having a regular human rise to the level that she could threaten John's Empire and in keeping the morality of their conflict so open to interpretation. Even if she stays dead, the shadow of her crusade for a free humanity hangs over this series and will certainly play a role in Alecto the Ninth.

Thanks for reading, until next time <3