“I’ve heard your story from your leader,” Arc nodded at Caroni, looking around as he spoke, “and now we welcome you here. I know two of your band have been hurt, as has one of ours. We hope that’s an end to violence between us.”

He paused. “We were members of a Lowlander chat group and we came together from all over Bajacu to see if we could live at higher altitudes. Some of us,” Arc indicated the youngest-looking boy, “are family. A few of us had been selected for the Squad and we didn’t want to go. We’ve been in the hills for six years and survived feral attacks, Domin ranger patrols, rain bombs, landslides, dust storms. We used to be bigger – we lost seven people last year in a landslide.” He paused.

“We’re sixteen now,” Caroni said. “We’ve had our trials too.”

“We have water in this valley, but it’s declining. When it’s light, we’ll show you the waterfall. And you can see we have good shelter in these caves. We built the lean-tos you saw as decoys –”

“You shouldn’t have built them,” Rashelope interrupted. “That’s how we found you.”

“This is the one who injured Rapt?” Arc said, turning to Caroni.

“He was threatening –”

“She’ll be useful. You saw us,” he continued, “but you couldn’t get to us from the south, right? Except for the tunnel from the sinkhole to the cave, there’s only one way into this valley overland and few have found it so far. The lean-tos distract anyone who comes. They dig through the stuff, take what they want and leave. We post sentries day and night. We have guns and other weapons.”

“Do you have ammunition?” Caroni asked.

“Some. Maybe enough, maybe not.”

Enough for what, Sorrel wondered.

“For a while we had enough to eat and there was the camp above. We started to raid it. There were not many Toplanders there at first. But then they built the wall and more started to come.”

“I told them about Alba and Llando,” Kes said.

“Tell us more about the camp,” Caroni said.