Ian looked to Robin, waiting for a signal from her in the darkness. “Not yet,” she whispered.
The next several minutes felt like hours. Ian assumed they were waiting for the man to fall back asleep.
The dogs came back, sniffing each person in turn and then panting happily when Ian and each of the bandits offered head pats and ear scratches. Eventually, though, even Gray and Wolf grew bored and wandered off, likely to return to their favorite sleeping spot.
Finally, Robin stood from her crouched position and peaked around the corner of the house.
Ian followed suit, ignoring the protest in his legs as his frozen muscles reawakened.
Robin motioned for Nele to follow her around the corner and onto the wooden porch.
Ian, Lane, Ulli, Jette, and Rigelt left the hiding place but remained near the corner of the building, awaiting further direction from Robin.
Nele moved quietly against the back wall of the house, testing the two windows that sat on either side of the back door. Choosing the closer of the windows—the one with the glow—Nele pulled some sort of tool from the pouch at her belt. To Ian, it looked like a firm string, perhaps similar to a waxed bowstring, that had a small dowel attached to one end.
After sliding the string under the windowpane, Nele worked it back and forth. The night was so quiet that Ian could hear a distinct click when the tool accomplished its job. Nele pushed against the paned glass.
Robin, standing behind her, grabbed the glass and held it open while Nele deftly slipped inside.
Moments later, the back door swung open.
Robin gently closed the window, then motioned for the rest of them to follow her through the door.
Ian, entering last, barely saw Robin disappear through a small door at the opposite end of what was indeed a kitchen. The room was much smaller than the kitchen at Lockwood. While the reeve’s home was larger than any other in the village, it was still only half the size of the remote manor of Lady Lockwood. Ian walked past the large stone fireplace, which gleamed red with banked coals for the night, and stepped through the doorway after Robin.
She stood on the bottom step of a narrow staircase. In front of her, Nele unwrapped an apple-sized piece of glowing Majis glass to illuminate the small cellar around her. The four walls of the cellar were lined with wooden shelves.
And each of the shelves was bursting with food.
Ian instantly noted the stark contrast of these shelves with the Lockwood larder he had seen a few days prior.
The wall to his left contained baskets overflowing with winter vegetables and the few fruits that would survive for a whole season or more in the right conditions. The far wall held wax-covered cheese wheels, dried meats, and sawdust-covered eggs. The final wall, to his right, was completely filled with familiar jars of preserved fruits, small barrels of brined vegetables, and cloth sacks of dried beans.
It was enough food to feed several families for an entire season.
“Here is our answer,” Ian said, standing on the stair above Robin as anger coursed through his body. “You do not even need me to count supplies.”
Robin did not appear to have even heard him. Her eyes were fixed on some point beyond the wall of the cellar. Even from the narrow view he had of the side of her head, Ian could see the pure, calculated rage in her expression.
For a brief moment, he nearly felt sorry for the reeve. The man was unlikely to survive his next encounter with Robin of Lockwood.
“This is too much for a single household to have taken on their own,” Nele said. “He must have been sending several people to each delivery to pick up as much as possible, then deliver it back here to himself. But what of their own homes? Have their families been starving because he coerced them into this?”
Ian did not know the answer to that question.
Robin still stood on the bottom stair, unmoving.
Taking her shoulders in his hands, Ian gently moved her to the side, stepping around her in the tight space to stand near Nele.
Opening the satchel at his side, he pulled out an empty, folded canvas sack. Then he shook it open and placed it on the stone floor next to his feet.
Reaching over to the right wall, he began to fill his sack with the food that had originally come from Lockwood.
Nele stood over him, handing down one jar at a time as he carefully arranged them. When his pack was full, he tied the top closed and opened another.
“We take as much as we can carry,” Robin said, her voice devoid of the rage that still lined her face. She lifted the heavy, full sack from the ground and carried it up the stairs.
Rigelt and Ulli took her place on the stairs, each carrying up a filled sack until all the empty bags they had brought with them were full.
