Grimjaw Stonehide's Arc

Chapter 14 of 15

Ugral did not rush. Grimjaw learned that in the first grip. The pale giant clamped his tusks against Grimjaw's steel and held, slow and patient, twisting for the angle Grath had warned about. The socket held. Three days of healing had seated it deep. But Grimjaw could not feel through the metal, and Ugral kept probing, hunting the weak line where bone met steel. Grimjaw broke the lock and stumbled back. The socket had passed one test. Ugral had a hundred more. "You feel nothing on that side," Ugral said. He circled slow. "I feel everything." He clamped down again, and this time he found the angle. Pain shot up Grimjaw's jaw. The healed bone groaned. It did not break, but it bent, and Grimjaw knew it would not bend twice. A voice cut across the ring. "He grinds because you let him set his weight." An old grey warlord stood at the edge of the crowd, leaning on a broadsword taller than a troll. Wolf pelts draped his shoulders. Grimjaw had traded blows with Vorgath Ironpelt once, years back, and lost. The warlord had never offered him a word since. Now he pointed a scarred finger. "Steel does not tire. Neither does he. But he must plant his feet to grind. Take his feet." Grimjaw broke free again, gasping. Ugral reset, tusks forward, waiting for the lock. This time Grimjaw did not lock. He drove his shoulder low into the giant's braced knee. Ugral's plant slipped. The grinding pressure vanished. For one heartbeat the pale monster had no footing, and a monster without footing could not grind. Grimjaw seized it. He hooked his right tusk under Ugral's, the tusk he could still feel, and heaved while the giant's weight hung loose. Ugral toppled. His spiked club fell from his hand. Grimjaw pinned the wide chest to the frozen ground and pressed his forearm to the pale throat. Ugral strained, patient even now, but patience needs a base, and Grimjaw had taken it. The giant's arms went flat. The crowd roared. Grimjaw stood, chest heaving, steel tusk still rooted in a jaw that had bent but not broken. Grok Frostmane's grin was gone. He hauled Ugral up and dragged him toward the hide yurt at the ring's edge, its bone fittings pale in the cold. Vorgath Ironpelt did not smile. He shouldered his great sword and studied Grimjaw the way a butcher studies a carcass. "The socket held today," he said. "Barely. It bent under one giant. I have broken jaws that never bent at all." He turned and walked into the crowd. "When I come for the belt, boy, I will not slip." Grimjaw pressed two fingers to his jaw. The steel sat firm, but the bone beneath ached where it had flexed. He had trusted the socket, and it had held. Now a warrior who had watched exactly how it strained was coming for it next.