Homeland (The Legend of Drizzt #1)(45)

“You are defeated!” the master said again.

Drizzt started to the fallen drow’s aid, but the master issued an emphatic, “No!”

Then Kelnozz was back at Drizzt’s side. “He got away,” Kelnozz began, but he broke into a laugh when he saw the downed student. “If a master calls you out, then you are out!” Kelnozz repeated into Drizzt’s blank stare.

“Come,” Kelnozz continued. “The battle is in full now. Let us find some fun!”

Drizzt thought his companion quite cocky for one who had yet to lift his weapons. He only shrugged and followed. Their next encounter was not so easy. They came into a double passage turning in and out of several rock formations and found themselves faced off against a group of three-nobles from leading houses, both Drizzt and Kelnozz realized.

Drizzt rushed the two on his left, both of whom wielded single swords, while Kelnozz worked to fend off the third. Drizzt had little experience against multiple opponents, but Zak had taught him the techniques of such a battle quite well. His movements were solely defensive at first, then he settled into a comfortable rhythm and allowed his opponents to tire themselves out, and to make the critical mistakes.

These were cunning foes, though, and familiar with each other’s movements. Their attacks complemented each other, slicing in at Drizzt from widely opposing angles.

“Thro-hands,” Zak had once called Drizzt, and now he lived up to the title. His scimitars worked independently, yet in perfect harmony, foiling every attack.

From a nearby perch on the catwalk, Masters Hatch’net and Dinin looked on, Hatch’net m ore than a little impressed, and Dinin swelling with pride.

Drizzt saw the frustration mounting on his opponents’ faces, and he knew that his opportunity to strike would soon be at hand. Then they crossed up, coming in together with identical thrusts, their sword poles barely inches apart.

Drizzt spun to the side and launched a blinding uppercut slice with his left scimitar, deflecting both attacks.

Then he reversed his body’s momentum, dropped to one knee, back in line with his opponents, and thrust in low with two snaps of his free right arm. His jabbing scimitar pole caught the first, and then the second, squarely in the groin.

They dropped their weapons in unison, clutched their bruised parts, and slumped to their knees. Drizzt leaped up before them, trying to find the words for an apology. Hatch’net nodded his approval at Dinin as the two masters set their lights on the two losers.

“Help me!” Kelnozz cried from beyond the dividing wall of stalagmites. Drizzt dove into a roll through a break in the wall, came up quickly, and downed a fourth opponent, who was concealed for a back-stab surprise, with a backhand chop to the chest. Drizzt stopped to consider his latest victim. He hadn’t even consciously known that the drow was there, but his aim had been perfect!

Hatch’net blew a low whistle as he shifted his light to the most recent loser’s face. “He is good!” the master breathed.

Drizzt saw Kelnozz a short distance away, practically forced down to his back by his opponent’s skilled maneuvers. Drizzt leaped between the two and deflected an attack that surely would have finished Kelnozz.

This newest opponent, wielding two sword poles, proved Drizzt’s toughest challenge yet. He came at Drizzt with complicated feints and twists, forcing him on his heels more than once.

“Berg’inyon of House Baenre,” Hatch’net whispered to Dinin. Dinin understood the significance and hoped that his young brother was up to the test.

Berg’inyon was not a disappointment to his distinguished kin. His moves came skilled and measured, and he and Drizzt danced about for many minutes with neither finding any advantage. The daring Berg’inyon then came in with the attack routine perhaps most familiar to Drizzt: the double- thrust low.

Drizzt executed the cross-down to perfection, the appropriate parry as Zaknafein had so pointedly proved to him. Never satisfied, though, Drizzt then reacted on an impulse, agilely snapping a foot up between the hilts of his crossed blades and into his opponent’s face. The stunned son of House Baenre fell back against the wall.

“I knew the parry was wrong!” Drizzt cried, already savoring the next time he would get the opportunity to foil the double-thrust low in a session against Zak.

“He is good,” Hatch’net gasped again to his glowing companion. Dazed, Berg’inyon could not fight his way out of the disadvantage. He put a globe of darkness around himself, but Drizzt waded right in, more than willing to fight blindly.

Drizzt put the son of House Baenre through a quick series of attacks, ending with one of Drizzt’s scimitar poles against Berg’inyon’s exposed neck.

“I am defeated,” the young Baenre conceded, feeling the pole. Hearing the call, Master Hatch’net dispelled the darkness. Berg’inyon set both his weapons on the stone and slumped down, and the blue light appeared n his face. Drizzt couldn’t hold back the widening grin. Were there any here that he could not defeat? he wondered.

Drizzt then felt an explosion on the back of his head that dropped him to his knees. He managed to look back in time to see Kelnozz walking away.

“A fool,” Hatch’net chuckled, putting his light on Drizzt, then turning his gaze upon Dinin. “A good fool.”

Dinin crossed his arms in front of his chest, his face glowing brightly now in a flush of embarrassment and anger. Drizzt felt the cool stone against his cheek, but his only thoughts at that moment were rooted in the past, locked onto Zaknafein’s sarcastic, but painfully accurate, statement: “It is our way!”