NOVEL NEXT Dragonhunt 28: Death's Helm
Full protection. That's the dream of every runeknight, but only few fulfill it. Plates need gaps if you're to move, and only a very few dwarves have the skill to make plates so fine and well fitted that every space is covered.
Helmets pose an even greater problem. They need gaps for breathing and for seeing. Even the helmets worn by the dwarves of the deep had eye slits, though I feel this was more out of tradition than anything else.
Yet it is possible to make metal transparent. Runethane Thanerzak managed it, as did several of his commanders, most famously Vanerak. So why can't I? One of the main properties of ice is transparency.
Why should I, though? It's going to be difficult. This is the idea I feel I'm overreaching the most on. So many things can go wrong. If I fail, my helmet will be totally unusable.
Yet I have to try. The power I felt from Vanerak was immense. I want to take a step towards having that kind of power, even if he's not my opponent on this quest.
I draft the poem: a dwarf frozen into a crystal sees his opponent's every move before it happens. I cross everything out. Far too ambitious, silly even. My next poem: the clearness of the air above the frozen wasteland lets the dwarf see to the far horizon. No. Too directionless.
Draft after draft I discard. My eyes and head begin to ache. I'm thirsty and hungry again. This time I return to the guildhall willingly, hoping that a good meal and some sleep will rejuvenate my imagination.
“Zathar! Haven't seen you for a while!”
It's Jerat. Ten mugs of beer are laid out in a line before him. All but the last two are empty. I sit down opposite.
“Take the last one,” he says.
“Had enough already?”
“Of course I haven't had enough. My next will be something stronger to make up for the loss... Drink, drink!”
I toss it back and cough. “What is this stuff?”
“Strong, isn't it?”
“And lukewarm.”
“Warm beer isn't so bad once you get used to it.”
“You only say that because you've lost all feeling in your mouth.”
“True, true, true,” he laughs. “How's your armor going? Only one long-hour left to go now.”
“What?” I jump in shock. “Already?”
“They brought the schedule forward a little. By one long-hour. There's to be no testing either. Xomhyrk is in a hurry for some reason.”
“Shit.”
“Not going to be done in time?”
“Barely in time.”
“You'd have more time if you didn't waste so much on drafting, planning, all that bollocks. Do what I do. Rune by rune. Live in the present.”
I scowl. “Don't be absurd. Runic poems are constructions. How would you even do the runic flow calculations?”
“As I go?”
“That doesn't make any sense.”
“Well, my poems work, don't they?”
“It's been a while since you advanced a degree though, hasn't it?”
He laughs. “Getting all high and mighty now we're fourth, are we?”
“I'm just saying that maybe you need to rethink your approach to crafting.”
“Take your own advice. Try my method. Rune by rune. It's never let me down.”
“Not once?”
“Not very often. But hey, is there a runeknight out there who never fucked up?”
“I suppose not.”
“You still don't sound convinced. Well, I'll tell you something, my friend: you will be when you see my new weapon.”
“What is it?”
“Something those puny humans won't stand a chance against!”
“We're after the dragon,” I remind him.
“Oh, it'll scrape a few scales off the dragon as well, no doubt. But its main function... Ah, you're going to be impressed, Zathar. Very impressed.”
I stand with the palladium wire in my hands and not a single clue about what I'm going to write in my head. The empty space on the anvil that my draft would usually occupy keeps drawing my eyes. My heart is beating hard.
This is stupid. Jerat may be my friend, but he's a drunk, and a degree below me also. Why the hell am I taking his advice? Do I really have no other choice?
Of course I have a choice. I need to choose to sit down and write out my drafts. I need to plan! How can you enrune without planning? And Jerat even says he grafts as he goes along! That would give me no room for error, not even a single rune's worth; a single off-placed stroke would ruin everything, completely destroy this armor's potential.
And yet his method appeals to me. The thought of following it sends a thrill through me. Pressure can turn coal to diamonds, can it not? Heroes are born in battle, not in training with wooden swords and wooden armor. The runes I created in my trial were born from extreme pressure also.
There is also my power. I've some measure of control over it now. But I can only evoke it when I've metal in my hands.
I shut my eyes. I imagine myself sinking through the stone. A tide of yellow and red rises up over my vision and I grow hot. My ruby amulet is beating like a heart of hot iron against my chest. My body grows even hotter, from the feet up. The yellow liquid is turning brighter, and then I sense resistance. It's the surface of the sphere.
Abruptly I'm cold. It's dark. I look from left to right at the darker shapes in here with me. On my left, hatred, and on my right, love.
This isn't some past memory. This is present reality. These dwarves next to me—or at least they are casting their shadows next to me—are not long-dead enemies of a figure of myth. They are alive, out there, somewhere, and I'm sure that I have met them both before.
Runes! I try to ignore the cold. I'm here for runes, to seek understanding of them for my poem. I focus on cold, and on seeing.
My eyes open. I see the shapes before me, jagged splinters, daggers of ice, razor sharp. My fingers start to move. I bend the palladium into the shape of the first rune. It's long and thin with three indents on its left side, the shape, in this script I have created, that means the sound nachroktey, which means death—and although there are many words in our dwarven tongue that mean death, nachroktey is the most powerful. It means the nothingness that comes after the violence, the abyss of cold where there is no fire to heat the furnace and where everything is so still that nothing ever happens, and even the passage of time no longer exists. All is frozen.
I graft it onto where my left eye will look out of. Then I twist and graft the next rune, and the next. When I reach where my right eye will be, I twist the rune for nachroktey once more. Both I graft with hytrigite. The flashes are cold.
Some small voice at the back of my head is telling me I ought to stop. I set out for transparency and protection from fire. Why have I chosen death? Is this just instinct?
No! I am beyond that. My power does not control my hand anymore. I control it! Me! I know exactly what I'm doing. I'm signing onto my helmet a poem that means to seek death, that means to gaze out over the world in search of an enemy that must either be destroyed or destroy me.
I will kill the black dragon! I will see its weak-point through this death's head helm and strike my pick through its scales and freeze solid its heart.
This is my oath, was it not? Kill or be killed! Bring death to the dragon, or die in the attempt!
So what, I tell the voice at the back of my mind, is so wrong with what I am doing? We runeknights deal in death! We don't forge weapons and armor for purposes of pride, to show off on inanimate stands within our guildhalls. We forge them for battle! We forge them that we may kill our enemies and survive to kill more, and more, and more!
My poem tells of a skeleton sitting upon the endless wastes of ice. It raises its head and sees through the still air. It fixes its empty sockets on the far distance. On the other side of the world is a darkness. The poem does not say what the darkness is, but it's clear from context that within it lies the slain dwarf's regret.
The poem has no stanzas. It's one line, free-flowing, yet at the same time tightly controlled. Writing it feels like how sprinting down a ridge of ice must feel. I must go fast, not overthink, not hesitate, and yet at the same time calculate every step or meet disaster. I am calculating runic flow even as I create the metaphors and wordplay. My head aches, yet the ache is strangled and muted and given no freedom to rake its claws through me.
In the final line, the skeleton rises to its bony feet and, with a single step, strides across the frozen world to stand before the great shadow.
What happens next is left unwritten.