Gunslinger

The word gunslinger names both Roland Deschain and the order he comes from. Gunslingers are the knights of Roland's fallen civilization: trained from boyhood in Gilead under hard teachers, schooled in the gun, the hawk, and the hand, and sworn to a code of duty older than the baronies they serve. A boy wins the title only by defeating his own teacher in single combat, and one who fails is sent west into exile. The world has moved on, its feudal courts and futuristic ruins crumbling together, and Roland is the last of the line, pursuing the man in black across the desert and questing for the Dark Tower beyond it.