Character from Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
Bridgeburner sapper turned Bonehunter sergeant — a red-bearded demolitions expert who reads the Deck of Dragons and plays a fiddle that makes gods weep, the beating heart of the entire saga.
Fiddler is the series' moral compass disguised as a sapper — a man who blows things up for a living but feels every death in the Deck's turning. He reads the Deck of Dragons with a talent that terrifies him, seeing futures he cannot change and patterns he cannot unsee. His fiddle playing is something else entirely: when he plays, magic bleeds through the notes, emotions become tangible, and even Ascendants pause to listen. He leads his squad with the same mixture of competence and heart that Whiskeyjack taught him — not by being the most powerful but by being the one who cares the most and shows it the least. He uses humor as armor, cynicism as camouflage, and loyalty as bedrock. Every Bridgeburner death lives in him. He carries the company's memory like a sacred burden, and when the Bonehunters march into the unknown, he is the one who keeps the human scale visible against the cosmic backdrop.
Stocky and red-bearded, with the permanently singed eyebrows of a man who has spent decades working with munitions at close range. Calloused hands equally comfortable with crossbow cussers and fiddle strings. His face is weathered into a permanent squint — part suspicion, part amusement, part the look of someone who has survived more explosions than is statistically reasonable. Carries his fiddle case everywhere with more care than he carries his weapons.
Also known as: Fiddler, Strings, Sergeant Fiddler, Fid