At the beginning of The Waste Lands, Roland and his companions are attacked by a giant bear named Shardik.
Shardik appears in the opening section of Stephen King's third Dark Tower novel, published in 1991. Roland's ka-tet encounters the enormous creature in the ancient, decaying world beyond Lud. Although Shardik looks like a supernatural bear, he is actually a gigantic mechanical or cyborg Guardian of the Beam, built by the technologically advanced North Central Positronics.
Shardik has become dangerously unstable after thousands of years. He is sick, infested with parasites, and driven into a violent frenzy, forcing Roland and the others to kill him. His death is important beyond the immediate fight: it shows how the old systems protecting the Dark Tower are failing.
Readers sometimes confuse Shardik with other Dark Tower names, especially Calla, which is associated with wolves in a later book. The name also alludes to Richard Adams's 1974 novel Shardik, whose title character is likewise a giant bear.