Free Days of High Adventure by Elliott Kay Page A

escape all these guards and cover all this distance together. Your skills improve, but you are not ready for such a challenge. We need a better opportunity than I have seen thus far.”
    “But that’s what I mean,” Eric pressed, stopping in his tracks. “Is it really worth all this bullshit just to stay here with me?”
    The barbarian woman’s brow furrowed deeper. “Yes.”
    Eric blinked. “Why?”
    “You asked me to help you.”
    “I’m grateful. I’m really grateful. I just...I keep thinking of how much I owe you and how much happier you’d be to get out of here, and I can’t understand why you stay for just me.”
    Her mouth turned into a frown. “I left the North alone, and have been mostly alone for all the years since. Hardly any man has looked at me without either disdain or fear until I met you. And you may be from some soft world, but you are neither cowardly nor weak. Perhaps I expect much of others, but I will not lower myself to expect less. Friends have always been the hardest of treasures to find.” She paused and added, almost as an afterthought, “And I like your face.”
    Eric was stunned. Guilt had been eating at him for the last few days. He wanted to encourage Fallon to move on, but her response floored him.
    “You there!” growled Tronus. He came stomping down the tunnel from the entrance, flanked by a pair of guards. “Get down there and get to work. This isn’t a tavern!”
    Fallon didn’t bother to look at the overseer. Her gaze was still on Eric. “Although my patience with this place does wear thin,” she added.
    Grinning with her, Eric turned and headed the rest of the way to the main dig site. They arrived to find the main bulk of the slave labor force already at work in what was now a huge, broad cavern. Space had been cleared out all around the ancient temple, as Set’s priests demanded full access to every rune on every wall before continuing. Further cave-ins had occurred, freeing space between the temple’s roof and the ceiling of the cave and removing the need for at least some of the harsher digging, though at the cost of other slave lives.
    Light was now plentiful in the cavern. Holes had been bored from up above to provide bright shafts of daylight as well as ventilation. Ropes dangled from each hole to enable slaves up above to lower buckets of water without having to traverse the tunnels. Supervision increased, too. Scattered around the cavern were priests of Set studying all of the ruins in detail, along with guards and overseers to keep the work force in line.
    A scream split the cavern air as Eric and Fallon arrived, resounding clearly from within the temple’s outer walls despite the noise of the ongoing dig. Given the complete lack of safety measures, screams of pain from accidents were commonplace; screams of terror like this one were another thing entirely. They heard another, and then a third, and then a rush of cries as slaves ran from the ruined gate through the temple’s outer walls. Shouts of panic quickly spread.
    Fallon gripped Eric’s shoulder. “ Some foul magic is at work here,” she growled. “I knew these fools would unleash something better left buried.”
    Within heartbeats, Fallon was proven right. As guards rushed in to control the crowd and slaves fought to get out, the pair saw one last man emerge from the temple walls. Clinging to his back was another man, or something close to it —except for the green, scaly skin and the snakelike head atop its thick, long neck. It reared back with its fanged mouth open wide before clamping down on the slave’s neck with a fatal bite.
    Even as the man staggered and fell, more snake men appeared. They bore spears and bows, with shields covered with black leather and swords fashioned from some ancient creature’s bones. Dozens of the snake-men rushed out, then dozens more, all of them falling upon their human prey without mercy.
    A priest in the robes of Set stood forward, raising his arms high