Crossword-Solution: HARDBITTEN 10 letters, 4 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 16

Only Vologonov was nudging Felitzata, and saying to her in a loud, authoritative tone: "Very ready are you to weep, but I should like first to hear the exact circumstances of the lad's death." Thus invited, the woman wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her bodice, licked her lips, heaved a prolonged sigh, and fell to regarding Antipa's red, hardbitten face with the cheerful, unabashed glance of a person who is under the influence of liquor.

These were at first spiders--then, members of a half dozen, a dozen other races, as the word was passed from one people to another--as tribe after tribe of hardbitten, suspicious warriors, fingers, fidgeting on triggers at the open approach of their hereditary mortal foes, heard and were electrified by the news-- _The Coming of the Drone!_ And hand gripped hand, all feuds were forgotten, the peoples mingled in a common effort of hurried mobilization.

This was a tough priest, though, a lean hardbitten man, with a fanatical long face that shoved itself into Revel's and clicked its teeth a quarter-inch short of his nose.