Days of High Adventure by Elliott Kay

as he said. She was the faster climber, anyway; he would only slow her down. The barbarian woman heaved herself up the rope with one hand, practically letting go of the rope before the next hand even caught hold.
    An arrow flew by her as a serpent archer misjudged her speed. She kept going. There was a second missile, followed by a third, all of them narrowly missing Fallon in her erratic climb.
    Though she didn’t slow in her ascent, Fallon spared a downward glance toward the archer. She could do only so much before it got a sense of her speed and landed a fatal shot. As she spotted her assailant, though, she saw it impaled through the stomach by a sword flung through the air.
    Then Eric was at the rope below her. He was no longer armed, but it was just as well; he needed both hands to climb, anyway. Fallon continued up the rope, reaching the cavern ceiling in seconds. No other serpent men or guards tried to stop them, distracted as they all were by more immediate matters all around.
    Eric wasn’t long in catching up. Before he got to the shaft, he looked out across the cavern floor to see the chaos below. As he had guessed, the serpent men saw little difference between guard, priest and slave. They struck down anyone in their path. Dozens waded into the press of slaves still trying to get out of the tunnels, while others were already devouring the fallen. The serpent men couldn’t swallow a whole man, but they could clearly cut one into small enough pieces on which to gorge themselves.
    Fallon paused in her climb mid-way through the shaft, bracing her legs against its walls. She waited until Eric was similarly ensconced by the rocks. “There will be panic above,” Fallon said.
    “Yeah,” Eric huffed. “Those snake guys look hungry. Probably chase down anyone they see.”
    “Then we make a break for it. We slip through one of the supply tents. The guards will have their hands full. We take what we can carry and escape. If the archers still patrol the outskirts despite all this, we’ll have to make short work of them.”
    “Right,” Eric nodded. His voice was a bit shaken. He could hardly believe he’d pulled off the physical feats he’d just performed. “Was this the kind of opportunity you were waiting for?”
    “Yes!” Fallon said with a triumphant note. “If we are lucky, Bel-Danab will think you dead!”
     
    ***
     
    It was certainly easier to study in the temple than it had been in Bel-Danab’s tower. She found space to practice and experiment, all without a need to hide her activity. Food and drink were plentiful, and little was expected of Amanda in the two weeks since she’d arrived. She could keep mostly to herself, letting her time be consumed with her studies. Though there was ever more to learn, Amanda found her power grew quickly here.
    That said, the temple offered plenty of distractions. Deyallah, as it turned out, was a fertility goddess—blessing humanity as well as the fields. What’s more, she and her disciples were quite uninhibited about it. Indeed, they were uninhibited about virtually everything.
    Once granted sanctuary by the high priestess, Amanda was given a spare room of her own and even clothing that fit better than anything she had swiped from Bel-Danab’s tower. Amanda was now the proud owner of two rather abbreviated silken sarongs, if they could be called that. She was more inclined to call them scarves. Yet though they took care of the more vital concerns of modesty, Amanda soon found that few within the temple wore even so much as this.
    The men of the temple, all of them healthy, young and deferential to the women, largely wore only loincloths. The women wore about the same, casually showing off their curves and their skin. More than a few wore elaborate jewelry that served only to draw attention to their naked flesh rather than cover up their naughty bits. Amanda did her best not to stare, though she soon realized that her gaze never resulted in less than