Wulfgar, snapped both feet straight out, kicking the barbarian behind the knees.
Wulfgar's legs buckled and one of his knees slammed into the wall.
Drizzt used the momentum to roll again. He came back to his feet and leaped, grabbing the overbalanced Wulfgar by the back of his hair and tugging hard, toppling the man like a cut tree.
Wulfgar groaned and rolled, trying to get up, but Drizzt's scimitars came whipping in, hilts leading, to connect heavily on the big man's jaw.
Wulfgar laughed and slowly rose. Drizzt backed away.
"You are not the teacher," Wulfgar said again, but the line of blood-filled spittle rolling from the edge of his torn mouth weakened the claim considerably.
"What is this about?" Drizzt demanded. "Speak it now!"
Aegis-fang came hurling at him, end over end.
Drizzt dove to the floor, narrowly avoiding the deadly hit. He winced when he heard the hammer hit the wall, no doubt blasting a clean hole in the stone.
He was up again, amazingly, by the time the charging barbarian got anywhere near him. Drizzt ducked under the lumbering man's reach, spun, and kicked Wulfgar in the rump. Wulfgar roared and spun about, only to get hit again in the face with the flat of Drizzt's blade. This time the line of blood was not so thin.
As stubborn as any dwarf, Wulfgar launched another roundhouse punch.
"Your rage defeats you," Drizzt remarked as he easily avoided the blow. He couldn't believe that Wulfgar, so finely trained in the art - and it was an art! - of battle had lost his composure.
Wulfgar growled and swung again, but recoiled immediately, for this time, Drizzt put Twinkle, or more particularly, put Twinkle's razor-edged blade, in line to catch the blow. Wulfgar retracted the swing top late and clutched his bloodied hand.
"I know your hammer will return to your grasp," Drizzt said, and Wulfgar seemed almost surprised, as though he had forgotten the magical enchantment of his own weapon. "Would you like to have fingers remaining so you might catch it?"
On cue, Aegis-fang came into the barbarian's grasp.
Drizzt, stunned by the ridiculous tirade and tired of this whole episode, slipped his scimitars back into their sheaths. He stood barely four feet from the barbarian, well within Wulfgar's reach, with his hands out wide, defenseless.
Somewhere in the fight, when he had realized that this was no game, perhaps, the gleam had flown from his lavender eyes.
Wulfgar remained very still for a long moment and closed his eyes. To Drizzt, it seemed as if he was fighting some inner battle.
He smiled, then opened his eyes, and let the head of his mighty warhammer dip to the floor.
"My friend," he said to Drizzt. "My teacher. It is good you have returned." Wulfgar's hand reached out toward Drizzt's shoulder.
His fist balled suddenly and shot for Drizzt's face.
Drizzt spun, hooked Wulfgar's arm with his own, and pulled along the path of the barbarian's own momentum, sending Wulfgar headlong. Wulfgar got his other hand up in time to grab the drow, though, and took Drizzt along for the tumble. They came up together, propped side by side against the wall, and shared a heartfelt laugh.
For the first time since before the meeting in the dining hall, it seemed to Drizzt that he had his old fighting companion beside him again.
Drizzt left soon after, not mentioning Catti-brie again - not until he could sort out what, exactly, had just happened in the room. Drizzt at least understood the barbarian's confusion about the young woman. Wulfgar had come from a tribe dominated by men, where women spoke only when they were told to speak, and did as their masters, the males, bade. It appeared as if, now that he and Catti-brie were to be wed, Wulfgar was finding it difficult to shake off the lessons of his youth.
The thought disturbed Drizzt more than a little. He now understood the sadness he had detected in Catti-brie, out on the trails beyond the dwarven complex.
He understood, too, Wulfgar's mounting folly. If the stubborn barbarian tried to quench the fires within Catti-brie, he would take from her everything that had brought him to her in the first place, everything that he loved - that Drizzt, too, loved, in the young woman.
Drizzt dismissed that notion summarily; he had looked into her knowing blue eyes for a decade, had seen Catti-brie turn her stubborn father in submissive circles.
Neither Wulfgar, nor Drizzt, nor the gods themselves could quench the fires in Catti-brie's eyes.
Chapter 3 Parley
The Eighth King of Mithril Hall, leading his