Grimjaw Stonehide's Arc

Chapter 10 of 15

The morning after his win, Grimjaw pressed a thumb to his left tusk and felt it shift. The crack ran deeper now. A thin line of pitch flaked away under his nail. The cap had held for the title, but it was splitting for good. The next challenger could come any day. A tusk this loose would snap at the first lock, and no strong grip could save a broken tusk. He needed it mended, and only one troll in the clan knew how. He found the mender's hut past the tournament grounds, a low dome of stitched pelts and pale bone poles. Inside, Tusk Mender Kraz'jin sat grinding a bone paste in a stone bowl. Feathers rose from his headdress, and beads of glass clicked at his chest. He did not look up. "The new champion comes crawling on his first morning," he said. "Sit. Let me see the ruin you brought me." Grimjaw sat and tipped his head. Kraz'jin gripped the cracked tusk and pulled. It gave with a wet sound that turned Grimjaw's stomach. The mender held up the broken cap and the yellowed stub beneath. "Rotted at the root. No paste will hold this. Pitch will crack again in one grip." He tossed the ruined piece into the fire. "Then cap it stronger," Grimjaw said. "There is no stronger cap for a root this dead." Kraz'jin turned to a rack behind him. He lifted down a curved tusk of sleek gray metal, scarred and worn, its base wrapped in a banded steel collar. "This does not crack. It does not rot. But it is not yours. It will not feel a grip. You must trust it blind." Grimjaw took the metal tusk. It was heavier than bone, cold in his hand. He thought of every fight he had won by feeling the lock through his own tusk. This one would tell him nothing. But bone had failed him twice, and it would fail him again. "Fit it," he said. Kraz'jin worked for an hour. He packed the socket with paste, seated the steel collar, and drove wedges to lock it tight. He smeared a dark resin around the seam and held a hot iron near it until the resin set hard. Then he sat back. "Bite down." Grimjaw clenched his jaw. The metal tusk held firm. No shift, no give. He swung his head and heard no crack. "It will not break," Kraz'jin said. "But you cannot feel through it. In a lock, you will be blind on the left. Learn that before a challenger does." Grimjaw stood and touched the cold metal point. His left was solid for the first time in weeks. His tusk would never fail him again. But now he could not feel what it touched, and a champion who could not read the lock was a champion waiting to fall.