The barbarian's ice-blue eyes narrowed immediately and he squared his broad shoulders, his strong jaw firm. 'I know she met with you,' he said, 'outside on the trails before you came in.'
A perplexed look crossed Drizzt's face as he recognized the hostility in Wulfgar's tone. Why would Wulfgar care if Catti-brie had met with him? What in the Nine Hells was going on with his large friend?
'Regis told me,' Wulfgar explained, apparently misunderstanding Drizzt's confusion. A superior look came into the barbarian's eye, as though he believed his secret information had given him some sort of advantage.
Drizzt shook his head and brushed his thick white mane back from his face with slender fingers. 'I am not here because of any meeting on the trails,' he said, 'or because of anything Catti-brie has said to me.' Wrists still comfortably resting against his weapon hilts, Drizzt strolled across the wide room, stopping opposite the large bed from the barbarian.
'Whatever Catti-brie does say to me, though,' he had to add, 'is none of your affair.'
Wulfgar did not blink, but Drizzt could see that it took all of the barbarian's control to stop from leaping over the bed at him. Drizzt, who thought he knew Wulfgar well, could hardly believe the sight.
'How dare you?' Wulfgar growled through gritted teeth. 'She is my-'
'Dare I?' Drizzt shot back. 'You speak of Catti-brie as if she were your possession. I heard you tell her, command her, to remain behind when we go to the goblins.'
'You overstep your bounds,' Wulfgar warned.
'You puff like a drunken ore,' Drizzt returned, and he thought the analogy strangely fitting.
Wulfgar took a deep breath, his great chest heaving, to steady himself. A single stride took him the length of the bed to the wall, near the hooks holding his magnificent warhammer.
'Once you were my teacher,' Wulfgar said calmly.
'Ever was I your friend,' Drizzt replied.
Wulfgar snapped an angry glare on him. 'You speak to me like a father to a child. Beware, Drizzt Do'Urden, you are not the teacher anymore.'
Drizzt nearly fell over, especially when Wulfgar, still eyeing him dangerously, pulled Aegis-fang, the mighty warhammer, from the wall.
'Are you the teacher now?' the dark elf asked.
Wulfgar nodded slowly, then blinked in surprise as the scimitars suddenly appeared in Drizzt's hands. Twinkle, the magical blade the wizard Malchor Harpel had given Drizzt, glowed with a soft blue flame.
'Remember when first we met?' the dark elf asked. He moved around the bottom of the bed, wisely, since Wulfgar's longer reach would have given him a distinct advantage with the bed between them. 'Do you remember the many lessons we shared on Kelvin's Cairn, looking out over the tundra and the campfires of your people?'
Wulfgar turned slowly, keeping the dangerous drow in front of him. The barbarian's knuckles whitened for lack of blood as he tightly clutched his weapon.
'Remember the verbeeg?' Drizzt asked, the thought bringing a smile to his face. 'You and I fighting together, winning together, against an entire lair of giants?
'And the dragon, Icingdeath?' Drizzt went on, holding his other scimitar, the one he had taken from the defeated wyrm's lair, up before him.
'I remember,' Wulfgar replied quietly, calmly, and Drizzt started to slide his scimitars back into their sheaths, thinking he had sobered the young man.
'You speak of distant days!' the barbarian roared suddenly, rushing forward with speed and agility beyond what could be expected from so large a man. He launched a roundhouse punch at Drizzt's face, clipping the surprised drow on the shoulder as Drizzt ducked.
The ranger rolled with the blow, coming to his feet in the far comer of the room, the scimitars back in his hands.
'Time for another lesson,' he promised, his lavender eyes gleaming with an inner fire that the barbarian had seen many times before.
Undaunted, Wulfgar came on, putting Aegis-fang through a series of feints before turning it down in an overhead chop that would have crushed the drow's skull.
'Has it been too long since last we saw battle?' Drizzt asked, thinking this whole incident a strange game, perhaps a ritual of manhood for the young barbarian. He brought his scimitars up in a blocking cross above him, easily catching the descending hammer. His legs nearly buckled under the sheer force of the blow.
Wulfgar recoiled for a second strike.
'Always thinking of offense,' Drizzt scolded, snapping the flat sides of his scimitars out, one-two, against the sides of Wulfgar's face.
The barbarian fell back a step and wiped a thin line of blood from his cheek with the back of one hand. Still he did not blink.
'My apology,' Drizzt said when he saw the blood. 'I did not mean to cut-'
Wulfgar came over him in a rush, swinging wildly and calling out to Tempus, his god of battle.
Drizzt sidestepped the first strike-it took out a fair-sized chunk from the stone wall beside him-and stepped forward toward the warhammer, locking his arm around it to hold it in place.
Wulfgar let go of the weapon with one hand, grabbed Drizzt by the front of the tunic, and easily lifted him from the floor. The muscles on the barbarian's bare arm bulged as he pressed his arm straight ahead, crushing the drow against the wall.
Drizzt could not believe the huge man's strength! He felt as if he would be pushed right through the stone and into the next chamber-at least, he hoped there was a next chamber! He kicked with one leg. Wulfgar ducked back, thinking the kick aimed for his face, but Drizzt hooked the leg over the barbarian's stiffened arm, inside the elbow. Using the leg for leverage, Drizzt slammed his hand against the outside of Wulfgar's wrist, bending the arm and freeing him from the wall. He punched out with his scimitar hilt as he fell, connecting solidly on Wulfgar's nose, and let go his lock on the barbarian's warhammer.
Wulfgar's snarl sounded inhuman. He took up the hammer for a strike, but Drizzt had dropped to the floor by then. The drow rolled onto his back, planted his feet against
the wall, and kicked out, slipping right between Wulfgar's wide-spread legs. Drizzt's foot snapped up once, stinging the barbarian's groin, and then, when he was behind 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?'
