Grimjaw Stonehide's Arc

Chapter 6 of 15

Grimjaw wiped ash from his cracked cap and stepped back into the ring's edge. Kragmar still lay in the churned floor, red eyes on him, saying nothing. The crowd had not settled from his last win when the horn sounded again. His next opponent was already walking in. Gromak Ironjaw, the orc who taught him the trick that won, now came to take it back. "You watched me use your own plan," Grimjaw said. Gromak nodded once. "I did. It worked. It will not work twice." Grimjaw knew he was right. The bait was spent. Gromak had seen the cap crack, seen the core hold. He would grip the left tusk expecting no shatter, and he would not lean past his balance. The whole fight had been built on a lie about that tusk. Now the lie was dead. From the ring's edge, a low voice reached him. Hjalgrim Frostpaw, the polarfolk cleric who had trained his stance in the snow, leaned on his ice-tipped spear. "You keep planning around the broken tusk," he said. "Stop. You have two." Grimjaw turned the words over. He had guarded the left, favored the left, fought every match around the left. He had forgotten his right tusk was sound and untouched. Gromak knew the left. Gromak knew nothing of the right. The horn cut off. Gromak lowered his head and drove in fast. His hands came for the left tusk, as Grimjaw knew they would. Grimjaw let him take it. But this time he did not fight from the left. He turned his whole body hard and swung the right tusk up under Gromak's jaw. Gromak's head snapped back. He had committed his weight forward, hunting the flaw. The sound tusk caught him where he did not guard. Grimjaw hooked it and drove, using his packed-snow footing to push through the orc's braced legs. Gromak fought it. His feet plowed the floor. Gold beads swung in his beard as he wrenched sideways. For a breath they held locked, tusk against tusk, neither giving. Then Grimjaw's rear foot found solid ground and he shoved with his hips. Gromak went down on his shoulder. The crowd came apart with noise. Grimjaw stood over him, breathing hard, both tusks whole. Gromak pushed up to one knee. He did not look angry. He looked like a man checking his own math. "The right," he said. "I forgot you had a right." "So did I," Grimjaw said. Gromak got to his feet and gripped Grimjaw's forearm once, hard. "The banner waits past you now." Then he stepped out of the ring. Two opponents down. Grimjaw's jaw throbbed where the cap had chipped, but his stance held. The clan's champion had not been named in three years. Now the crowd was chanting a name toward the far side of the ring, where his next fight would come from, and it was not a name he had beaten yet.