Grimjaw Stonehide's Arc

Chapter 9 of 15

The midday horn sounded. Grimjaw flexed his right hand and felt no shake. His grip had come back through the night. But his left cap was still cracked, and everyone knew it. He climbed into the tusk-post ring and faced the last man between him and the belt. Throk Ironhide stood across the hide mat. He was a troll like Grimjaw, blue-furred, but bigger, wrapped in plate armor. He had held the championship before the three empty years. He looked at Grimjaw's left tusk the way a butcher looks at a joint. "Your left is dead," Throk said. "So we lock left to left. I break it, and you go down like you did three years ago." Grimjaw said nothing. Throk had named the exact plan Grimjaw feared. A left-to-left grip would crush the cracked cap. His right grip was strong now, but strong hands could not fix a broken tusk. They circled. Throk lunged and drove his left tusk toward Grimjaw's left. Grimjaw did not meet it. He twisted his head hard and turned his sound right tusk into the path instead. The two right tusks caught and locked. Throk had committed his weight to a break that never came. Throk grunted and shoved. The hide mat creaked under their feet. Grimjaw's right grip held. His fingers dug into Throk's shoulder plate and did not tremble. All night he had kneaded these muscles loose. Now they answered him. Throk wrenched sideways, trying to free his tusk and swing back to the left. Grimjaw felt the pull and knew the cracked cap was one bad angle from snapping. He could not let Throk reset. He drove forward off his packed stance, the one he had learned trampling snow, and forced Throk's head down and back. Throk's boots slid. He fought to plant them and could not. Grimjaw locked his right grip tighter and pushed through the burn in his forearm. The bigger troll bent. His knees buckled. Grimjaw turned the joined tusks like a lever and drove Throk's shoulders into the mat. Throk hit the hide hard. The lock broke. He lay flat, chest heaving, one arm slapping the mat in surrender. The crowd on the tusk bleachers came to its feet. Grimjaw stood over the fallen champion, right tusk whole, left cap cracked but never tested. He had won the way he beat Gromak. Not around his broken tusk. Through his sound one. The belt came out then, tusk-shaped centerpiece bright against dark leather. Hands lifted it toward him. Grimjaw took it. Three years of empty title ended in his grip. He raised the belt and the arena roared. But his hands ached deep in the bone, worse than before the fight. The kneading had held for one bout. He looked at his fingers and felt the tremble starting again underneath, and the belt suddenly felt heavier than his arms could hold.