Tom-Tom

From Glen Cook Wiki

Tom-Tom is one of the Company's four initial wizards, along with Goblin, Silent, and his brother One-Eye. He is a wizened little black man, somewhere over a hundred years old but hale and hearty enough for field missions. Although he is perhaps the most powerful of the four, he loses his life to a forvalaka in The Paper Tower in Beryl (The Black Company).

He dragged fingers across the little drum that gave him his name.

Tom-Tom, One-Eye, and the forvalaka

Tom-Tom bobbed his head. He was more shaken than anyone. More shaken than the sight demanded, I though.
[...]
"You all right?" I asked Tom-Tom.
He eyed my medical kit and waved me off. "I'll be okay. I was just remembering."
I gave him a minute, then prodded, "Remembering?"
"We were boys, One-Eye and me. They'd just sold us to N'Gamo, to become his apprentices. A messenger came from a village back in the hills." He knelt beside the dead soldier. "The wounds are identical."
[...]
"Can you handle it?"
"N'Gamo couldn't. I'll never be his match, and he lost an arm and a foot trying to destroy a young male. What we have here is an old female. Bitter, cruel, and clever. The four of us might hold her off. Conquer her, no." "But if you and One-Eye know this thing...." "No." He had the shakes. He gripped his drum so tight it creaked. "We can't."