The Nart hero Soslan falls to a single unhardened weak point

Evidence

Soslan was a hero of the Narts, that ancient race of giants and heroes. When he was born, the wise smith of the Narts tempered his body in fire and water until his skin was hard as steel and no weapon could pierce him — but the smith’s tongs had gripped him by the knees, and so his knees alone were left unhardened, his one weak place. … But a hero with one weak place lives under a shadow, and in the end his enemies learned the secret of his knees. They set a magical wheel — the Wheel of Balsag — rolling down a mountain to strike him exactly where the smith’s tongs had held him. So even Soslan the steel-bodied fell at last, brought down not by greater strength but by knowledge of his single weakness. — , A Year of World Stories, 11991

Categorization

• XREF: The invulnerable-but-one-weakness motif connects to Achilles, Siegfried, and Balder in comparative myth.
• FICTION: The ‘smith’s tongs mark the unhardened spot’ origin for a weak point is a fresh mechanism for the classical trope.