1636_ The Saxon Uprising - Eric Flint [127]
Minnie unlatched the door. “Probably. On the other hand, not once in the history of the world have women been gang-raped by rats. It’s always important to keep a perspective on these things.”
She had a point, and not even Denise was that stubborn. On their way down the steep stairs—more like a heavy ladder, really—she consoled herself by saying: “Well, I guess we can always have our last shoot-out down here too.”
Noelle was bound and determined to see it didn’t come to that. She started moving sacks of onions and turnips, wondering if there were enough to pile over them.
“Hey, look at this,” said Minnie. She was crouched in a corner of the small basement, holding up the lantern Noelle had brought down.
The two other women went over. When they got next to her, they saw that Minnie had scraped aside some straw and exposed what looked like a small trapdoor. Denise reached down, seized the little loop of rope that seemed to serve as a latch, and lifted the door.
It came up fairly easily, given that it was obvious no one had moved the thing for years. Minnie held the lamp over it. Looking down, they saw a very small empty room below. More in the way of an alcove, really. The walls weren’t dirt, though. They’d been lined with wood, as had the floor. It was like a small, rather well-built closet that you entered from the top instead of the side.
Denise frowned. “What…?”
Minnie chuckled. “Whoever built this house was a pessimist, obviously. We don’t have to create a hideout, Noelle—there’s one already here.”
Noelle had reached the same conclusion herself. The safe room was superb, actually. Once the trapdoor was lowered on whoever hid inside, it could be covered with straw, some dirt—plenty of that, in a root cellar—and piled high with sacks of vegetables. Not quite enough to prevent the people inside from eventually forcing the door back open, but enough to discourage any searchers. Mercenaries looking for loot and women wouldn’t spend much time down here anyway. Especially if they were drunk, which they almost certainly would be. The biggest danger was that they’d set the whole house on fire. Arson was often a feature of a city being sacked.
Still, it was safer than anything else.
Denise peered more closely into the hideout. “I’m not sure we can all fit in there.”
Noelle had already come to that conclusion also. It didn’t really matter, though. The trapdoor wasn’t that well-concealed on its own. Minnie had spotted it easily, once she looked in this corner. Someone else could do the same. To make the hideout work, someone had to stay above and cover the trapdoor after it was closed.
“Give me your guns,” she said, extending her hands.
The two teenagers stared at her. “You’ve already got one,” said Minnie.
“And you can’t shoot anyway,” added Denise.
“I’m not going to argue about this, girls. A formality it might be, most of the time, but the fact is that you’re minors under my care. You won’t need those guns if you have to squeeze yourself down into that hole, and I need to stay up here to cover the trapdoor so it won’t be spotted.”
Noelle shrugged. “And my marksmanship is a moot point. If I have to use the guns—all three of them, and don’t think I won’t be blasting away like a maniac—it’ll be at point blank range anyway.” She looked around, squinting in the dim light. “I figure I’ll make Stull’s Last Stand down here, not upstairs. Less chance they could take me alive—and, either way, there’d be enough gore and stuff that they won’t stick around down here afterward to look for anybody else.”
Denise’s eyes were wide. So was Minnie’s one good eye.
Noelle shook her head. “I am not going to argue about this,” she repeated. “Give. Me. Your. Guns. Now.”
In the end, they settled on a compromise. Denise and Minnie would keep the guns until and unless it became clear that the walls had been breached, the city was being sacked, and all was lost. Then—only then—would the girls do as they were told.
As compromises went, Noelle figured it wasn’t a bad one. Given those two.
Then, they went back upstairs. Minnie and Denise