They moved the children out through the wall gap in a tight, hurried line, Pramono first to scout the dark beyond, Ki Branggah shepherding the youngest with Niken pressed close against his side. Rama and Surya brought up the rear with the low grinding groan still rolling faintly beneath their feet, like something enormous settling into a new position rather than waking fully. None of the children spoke. Rama understood why after Niken's words in the yard, and found he had no comfort to offer them that wouldn't have sounded like a lie.
They made it perhaps three hundred paces up the slope before torches bloomed along the compound wall behind them, a dozen at least. A voice rose in a clipped, disciplined command that carried none of the ragged desperation Wisnu's road blockade had shown days before. These were soldiers, real ones, moving with the coordinated speed of men who drilled together often and answered to someone who paid them well enough to care about the outcome.
