"I can do without it, also, but we can't go around it; that would take too long." Boyce looked at Lloyd with a perplexed expression. "Why did I agree on taking this route, anyway?" Lloyd grinned and closed his pack while he spoke. "It's shorter, for one thing." Boyce began. "I wonder, at times, if we will make it there, by taking this way?!" He drank some water then slung the sack around his neck and shoulders, and Lloyd did the same with his pack. They both got on their feet and looked at the escarpment then started in its direction, pacing themselves steadily and surely until they were quickly on the other side of the aspen, and were standing at the base of the escarpment's towering cliffs. "Looks high!" Boyce's brief comment drew a look from Lloyd until he finished his thought. "But -- we can't turn back now!" He laughed for a moment then looked up. "You know, if someone told me, back when I was a boy, that I would be climbing an impossible rock when I was twenty-one, I would have laughed in their face." Boyce continued to laugh, watching for Lloyd's reaction. "At least you're young, my friend. I'm nearly twice your age, so this trip is that much harder for me!" "Strange," Boyce began. "this thing, Fate! It made us friends through your hardship, kept us as friend through my own, and now we're going to a place where we will engage in battle... and maybe die, together." Lloyd gave him a strange look of disgust and shook his head. "If I didn't know you better, I'd swear that you were still reading Djenaud Smarte." he said to Boyce. "Knock, knock ..." Boyce smiled and then gave Lloyd a pat on the back. "Who'll go first?" "I will have to go first. I've done more climbing." answered Lloyd. "Watch where I put my hands and feet and climb up the same way." Boyce nodded in silence and Lloyd gave him a concerned looks as if to calm him. They began to climb the escarpment which was almost a straight vertical rise of brittle rock. Several times Lloyd lost his footing on the rocks that flaked off with every inch that they climbed. They had set for themselves two goals, the first being a wide lege about half-way up, and the second was the flat summit itself, where they were to sleep when the evening came. By late afternoon, after a slow and painful climb that almost claimed them both, they reached the ledge and took off their packs. Boyce looked down over the edge and he felt a chill go through him. "If I wasn't so tired, " he said. "I think that I'd get sick." Out of breath, Lloyd laughed and looked down himself. "You never ... you never get used to it, Boyce." He lay flat on his back and saw how far they still had to go. "We can't rest here for too much longer or we'll lose the strength to finish the rest of the way!" He lifted his arm towards the summit and let it drop down again. "I would rather have gone by caravan." Boyce sighed.