Judge Daztat approaches me. A slight smile is on his face and a happy glint is in his eye. I pick up my helmet and brace myself. I know what he's going to say—there's just been another arena-shaking cheer.
“Prosecutor Barahtan has finished his craft. If you are also finished, then we will carry out the test.”
“I am finished.”
“Excellent. Follow me.”
He leads me along the dividing wall, and we walk up the stairs to the circular platform below the box seats. In its center, facing the outside wall, is the armor stand, carried up by guards about an hour ago. Judge Gerapek stands beside it.
“Place your craft upon the stand, defendant.”
I fit it snugly to the head. The fit is perfect, at least. I step around to the front to make sure it's properly aligned, then step back.
The view gives me some confidence: it's a fine helm. The platinum and silver runes glint under the lights like spiders' webs in the moonlight. Their spiral arrangement makes the craft look almost like a shell, the armor of some water-dwelling warrior, and though I can't see the inner framework, the power of its runes is evident by the aura of solidity the titanium projects.
I would not be ashamed to wear this helm into battle. I straighten my back. I can win this contest.
Heavy steps herald the arrival of Barahtan. I breath deeply, grit my teeth, step around from the armor stand to get a look. My view is blocked by Judge Caletek. Then he shifts out the way and my breath catches in my throat.
I never expected a craft like this.
I have completely misunderstood the nature of this challenge.
We are not forging ordinary pieces of equipment.
Barahtan's hammer is enormous. I have never seen any weapon so massive, so brutishly heavy. He struggles to bring it up the stairs, even holding it like he is, with the head to his chest. His legs shiver and threaten to give with every step he takes. His breathing is labored, his face red. The veins on his neck are bulging almost to bursting.
When he makes it to the top of the platform, he immediately lowers the head of the hammer to the ground. He stumbles back from it, panting and wheezing.
The head is a lead sphere roughly half a meter in diameter—which means it weighs a significant portion of a ton. A poem of a hundred lines circles it, and each line can be started at any rune. They are silver, and by their tint grafted with quizik. Cheap materials—yet the way he's utilized them is simply brilliant.
A lesser runeknight might have written a poem to make the lead weigh less to the wielder. Barahtan has gone a more ambitious route. I can't understand the full text, since he's written it in a script I'm unfamiliar with, but I can grasp the outline. It is all about moving downwards. Even the size of the runes play a role in it. They get smaller toward the side of the sphere, making the lead appear as if it's streaked by hundreds of needle-thin arrows, all pointing at the striking surface.
The weapon is not light to him: it is absurdly heavy, but whatever ends up under it will experience a force of many, many tons beyond the sphere's merely physical mass.
Of course, a sphere on a handle is a mace, not a hammer. A hammer needs to have a main striking surface, as laid out in the rules of the contest, and Barahtan's intelligence is apparent in its construction also. It's tiny, barely the size of my palm, of steel with a surface of many pyramids. The runes are for durability alone. It brings to mind a meat-tenderizer.
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No: I dismiss that thought, spit on it. This weapon cannot be compared to something so base. I should not insult the victor.
And victor he will be. He has understood the conditions for victory. I have not.
“Whenever you are ready, come around to the front, Barahtan,” says Judge Gerapek. “Step away please, Zathar.”
I do so. Barahtan takes some deep, sucking breaths, grips the haft, and lifts his craft back up. Like before, he doesn't hold it like one normally would a warhammer. He keeps his hands just below its head, and the head of the weapon below his chin.
Right now he is not a warrior, but a weightlifter, an athlete—one of those strange dwarves that pushes their body instead of their crafts.
He makes it to the front of the armor stand and slowly turns to face it. Inch by inch he begins to raise the hammer up. It travels over his face, obscuring it, then it is above his head. His eyes look as if they are about to pop from their sockets.
In the battlecavern, his craft would be useless. A hammer has to have impact, yes, but it must also be mobile enough to strike through the gaps in the enemy's defenses, to parry, to riposte. A hammer is a slower weapon, but by no means can it be unwieldy.
This is not the battlecavern. The role of Barahtan's hammer is not to defeat an enemy dwarf, but to defeat my craft—which is immobile. I assumed he would make an ordinary weapon. Instead, he has made a weapon for the singular purpose of winning the contest. This is how he has defeated me.
He brings it down. The runes wrapping the sphere blur.
The striking-square contacts my helm, crumples the side. The titanium screeches and sparks flash. The armor stand shatters, the head tilts to one side, falls off with its wooden neck snapped. My helm bounces on the ground, rolls; the hammer impacts the stone next to it. Rock chips blast outward, spraying me and the judges.
Dust drifts around Barahtan's feet. Gray phlegm spatters from his mouth. He's wracked by coughing, yet I can only see this, can't hear it—the cheering of the crowd is drowning everything out.
The noise is raucous! The crystal lamps far above are shivering, making their light upon us shiver also. It plays across my broken helm. I stare at it with eyes wide, desperately hoping it is not utterly destroyed: the dust has not quite yet cleared, so though I can see it's broken, I cannot quite see how broken.
“Hold off on your next strike, Barahtan!” Judge Gerapek shouts over the cheering. “We need to examine the damage.”
Barahtan, still coughing from dust and raw-throated exhaustion, nods. Judge Daztat kneels down next to my helm and blows hard. Some of the dust clears.
“Obliteration!” he says. “I don't see how this is functional.”
I see that the left side is crumpled and broken, the outer skin torn from the rods, its poem rent. The rod visible through the wound is bent, though not by much.
“I wouldn't go that far,” says Judge Gerapek. “The inner framework is intact, and its runic flow hasn't been altered.”
“The bearer would not have survived,” Judge Daztat argues. “His skull would've been broken.”
“Cracked, maybe.”
“Let us have the crowd decide. Let me hold it up to them.”
He reaches out; Judge Gerapek grabs him by the shoulder.
“Stop!” he says. “We are the judges, not the crowd! Do not forget your role!”
Startled, Judge Daztat pulls back his hand. Then he composes himself and stands up.
“Very well. I say it is obliterated, though. You say it is not. Judge Caletek?”
I notice that I am not breathing.
Judge Caletek kneels to examine the helm more closely.
“The inner framework is intact. I judge that the helm is still functional."
"Absurd."
"Not absurd," says Judge Gerapek. "If this was battle, the bearer could have put it back on and still had some amount of protection.”
“If, coulds. Why are we talking in hypotheticals? The metal is rent. The trial is over.”
Judge Gerapek scowls. “We are to be impartial. I say this first round is to continue. Caletek?”
Judge Caletek glances up to the box seats fearfully, then flicks his eyes back down. For a moment he hesitates, then he nods.
“I agree. By no means is the defender's craft rendered unusable.”
I let out the breath I've been holding.
“Prosecutor Barahtan?” says Judge Gerapek. “If you will?”
“Should we not get another armor stand?”
“No. By the rules the craft is to lie where it fell.”
“All right.”
He lifts his hammer again, though this time only to chest height. He looks out to the stands, perhaps to his father. He lets the head fall.
My helm crumples. I hear a snapping sound. Only a small dust cloud rises this time, so I can see the damage clearly.
Damage is too weak a word. My helm is pinned under the hammer. When Barahtan lifts the weapon back up, all that's left is a concaved disc with a few broken ends of titanium rod sticking out.
“You still have eight strikes left,” says Judge Daztat after a few seconds.
“Surely that isn't necessary,” says Barahtan. “Besides, look at him.”
Without realizing it, I've fallen to my knees, and streams of tears are cutting trails through the dust on my face.