Grimjaw Stonehide's Arc

Chapter 7 of 15

Grimjaw waited at the ring's edge while the crowd chanted the name coming for him. Two wins had spent his cracked cap. It chipped worse with each fight. The title bout demanded a new grip, and the old one gripped left-to-left, tusk against tusk. His cap could not take that strain against the champion's challenger. He needed a plan before the horn, and he had none. The far side of the arena went quiet. His last opponent came through the gate, and the noise died in the throats around him. An undead thing, tall as two trolls, plated in rusted bronze. A bare elephant skull crowned with a red mohawk. Green light burned in its empty eyes. Its two tusks were wrapped in rusted chains, and it carried a gold-hilted axe. "Kharnak Bonecrusher," a voice near Grimjaw muttered. Nobody had beaten him in three years. Grimjaw understood then why the banner had hung empty. Kharnak stopped across the ring. He looked at Grimjaw's cracked left cap, then at the sound right tusk. "You fight around the broken one," he said. "I already know that." Grimjaw said nothing. The thing had watched him win twice. It knew his right now too. A shadow crossed the packed floor. Wings folded above the ring. A dragon landed on the high rail, black-scaled, red roses marked down her hide, wings edged in crimson. Thornheart Nightbloom. She had paid to cap his tusks before the tournament began. Her coin had put the bone and pitch in his mouth. Now she came to watch what her coin bought. She dropped a bottle into the ring. It rolled to his feet, shaped like a curved tusk, dark green liquid behind glass. "Drink," she said. "It hardens what you have. It will not fix the crack. It will hold the core through one grip." Grimjaw pulled the cork. The elixir tasted like cold iron. He felt his jaw set, the sound tusk turning heavy and firm. The horn cut the air. Kharnak dropped the axe and came in low, chains dragging on his tusks. He reached for the cracked left cap, the flaw everyone knew. Grimjaw did not give him the left. He drove off his packed footing and swung the right up, the tusk the elixir had set like stone. It caught under one chained tusk and jammed the rusted links. Kharnak wrenched. The chain bit into his own tusk and held it locked. He had never been gripped there. His weight went forward and stuck. Grimjaw shoved through with his hips and rolled the great skull sideways. The juggernaut crashed onto his shield. The green eyes flared, then dimmed. The crowd made no sound for a breath, then broke open. Grimjaw stood over him, both tusks whole, the cap chipped but the core sound. Kharnak did not rise fast. "The chains held me," he said. "You knew." Grimjaw had not known. He had guessed. Now only the final bout stood between him and the empty banner.