Grimjaw Stonehide's Arc

Chapter 13 of 15

Grath's warning gnawed at Grimjaw for two days. The steel would never break, but the bone that held it could. A patient challenger would find that angle and grind until his jaw gave. Grimjaw could train his stance forever and still lose to a slow lock. He needed the socket itself to grow harder. So he walked to the tusk mender's hut before the morning fires burned down. Kraz'jin sat among bones and beads, grinding paste in a stone bowl. The witch doctor had cut Grimjaw's rotted tusk out and set the metal one in its place. Grimjaw trusted no one else with his jaw. "The steel holds," Grimjaw said. "The bone under it does not. An old orc broke my footing by grinding the root. I need it stronger." Kraz'jin set down his bowl. He pressed two fingers hard against Grimjaw's jaw, along the line where flesh met steel. Grimjaw winced. "Pitch and fat only patch the surface," the mender said. "They cannot toughen a socket. This is bone, and bone must be fed, not painted." He rose and pulled a sealed clay jar from a high shelf. "Ground tuskbone from the great bear, boiled to marrow. Drink it, and the socket thickens. But not for free, and not without cost." "Name it." "The remedy hardens the bone slow. For three days you cannot grip. The jaw must knit undisturbed." Kraz'jin's eyes narrowed. "If a challenge comes before then, you fight with a jaw half-set. It may break worse than before." Grimjaw weighed it. Three days blind and weak against any fool who came for the belt. But without the remedy, the first patient wrestler would end him for good. He took the jar. "Pour it." The marrow was thick and gray and tasted of ash. Grimjaw drank it down. Kraz'jin packed cold moss around his jaw and bound it with hide strips. "Move nothing," the mender said. "No talking. No chewing. No fighting." Grimjaw endured the three days in his tent. The ache faded. By the third dawn the bound socket felt solid, seated deep, no longer screaming when he pressed it. He unwrapped the moss and worked his jaw slow. The steel sat rooted in bone that no longer buckled. He stepped outside to test his grip against a wrapped post. Before he reached it, a shadow fell across the snow. Grok Frostmane stood at the tent line, arms folded, tusks bared in the cold. But he was not alone. Beside him hulked a pale monster twice as broad, a spiked club resting on one shoulder, yellow eyes fixed on Grimjaw. "The belt draws hungry ones now," Grok said. "This is Ugral. He does not rush. He does not tire." Grok grinned. "He heard about your jaw." Grimjaw's socket had healed. But the one opponent built to grind it slow had just arrived.