The boy came back on deck after Cinnaminson was asleep and, with Khyber’s help, took down the bodies of Gar Hatch and his Rover cousins, wrapped them in sheeting, and stowed them belowdecks for burial at a later time. Then he relieved Tagwen at the helm. While he checked the Skatelow’s course and speed, he repeated to the Dwarf and the Elven girl what Cinnaminson had told him. For a while afterwards, no one said much of anything. Tagwen offered to take the wheel back so that Pen could get some sleep, but the boy insisted on staying at the helm through the night, just in case his flying experience might be needed for evasive action. Having gotten Cinnaminson back in one piece, he was not about to chance losing her again to carelessness of his own making.

So Khyber and Tagwen slept instead, and Pen was still at the helm when dawn broke in a slow brightening of the skies through gaps in a wall of massive peaks that rose before them. The stars and moon had gone, and the darkness was receding west, the new day a promise of the possibility, at least, of something better and safer. Pen’s eyes were gritty and blurred by then, and his need for sleep was acute. When Tagwen appeared with a simple breakfast of bread and cheese he had scavenged from the supply room below, the boy was so grateful he could barely speak. He ate ravenously and, after looking in on Cinnaminson to be sure she was all right, went off to bed.

He awoke near midday when Khyber shook his shoulder and told him to come on deck. “I think we’ve found Taupo Rough,” she announced with a grin. “Come see.”

He rose and went topside, finding Cinnaminson there, as well, come awake a few hours earlier to join the Elven girl and the Dwarf in the pilot box. Looking out over the ship’s bow to the landscape below, he saw a cluster of dark stone buildings and walls stacked in close proximity to one another on a low bluff and backed up against a cliff face that was riddled with caves connected by ladders and walkways. His initial impression was of a warren that probably ran as deep into the mountain as it extended out from it. Trolls of all sizes and shapes were moving about, but there seemed to be little interest in the Skatelow’s approach. No defensive maneuvers were being undertaken, and from what Pen could make out, there were few guards of any sort.