The Centaur’s Slave – Part 1

Branches caught and snagged on her cloaked as she fled. The baying of hounds grew closer, the duchess’s men couldn’t be too far behind. Damn them all. She pulled her cloak tighter and tried to go faster, but she simply didn’t have the wood craft needed to get through the forest at speed. Every time she tried to pick up the pace she’d stumble over a root or get whipped in the face by an inconveniently positioned branch.

The duchess’s men didn’t seem to have that problem, even less so their dogs. The barking and yelling grew closer. The trees thinned and she emerged into a clearing. She crouched and rested for a moment, trying to catch her ragged breath. The cloak’s hood slid back as she looked up at the sky revealing long, curly dark brown hair. She had bright blue eyes, high cheekbones and Cupid’s bow lips. Beneath the cloak was a slender body, though curved well enough in the right places. She stood a hair over five and a half feet.

A necklace had bounced out from under her shirt at some point during the run. She placed a hand over it. This little trinket had started the whole chase. She hadn’t stolen it, not really. By rights it belonged to her family! Her family that no longer had an estate or a fortune… Her family had been minor nobility, a thing that previously she’d never have believed could change. But apparently all it took was falling on the wrong side of someone bigger than you. Some rumors had been spread, some unpaid taxes had materialized and suddenly her families estates were liquidated, their assets seized.

In the end her father had been imprisoned, unable to scrape together the coppers he needed to buy his freedom. Her mother had passed away years earlier. And so she was the last free member of house Ferren, Lady Lillian. Well… she was a Lady no longer, just Lillian. She’d been forced to seek employment as a servant to survive. And who was waiting to take her in? Of course it was the duchess, the one who’d instigated the whole charade. In a move that surely secured her reputation as a generous and forgiving soul the duchess had offered employment.
With no skills and no prospects Lillian’s only choice was to accept. She realized quickly that her employment had nothing to do with generosity on the duchess’s behalf. At every turn she was broken down. Her lack of nobility rubbed in her face. The duchess specifically requested that Lillian wait on her hand and foot. Lillian was spared no task in the duchess’s employ. Scouring chamber pots, mending garments, any task that had previously been beneath her, and any skill that her upbringing ensured she lacked.

After months of servitude she’d noticed that the duchess had acquired a new piece of jewelry. It’d been prominently displayed in the center of the little cabinet that held her collection so that Lillian couldn’t miss it when she was tasked with polishing. It was a necklace that had belonged to Lillian’s mother, one that had been in the family for generations. Seeing a family heirloom on display, knowing that the duchess only regarded it as a trinket, it’d been too much. She’d taken the necklace, grabbed a cloak, and fled the estate. And here she was, in the woods, about to be overtaken by the duchess’s men.

Only now did she realize that she’d played right into the old bitch’s hands. The duchess must have grown tired of her. You could only gloat in front of a former noble so long before it became passé and the format noble just another commoner. How convenient would it be if that sub-par servant was found stealing? Then the servant could be thrown in jail with her father.
Lillian stood and began jogging through the clearing. Ahead was an overgrown cobble stone path, which led to a well. She looked back at the woods. The hounds weren’t close enough to see yet but she could hear them crashing through the brush. There was no chance she could outrun them. Maybe she could hide in the well?

She leaned over the lip of the well and stared into its dark depths. A rope hung down the center. She pulled on the rope and it seemed to hold, maybe it would bear her weight. It wasn’t as though she had many options. Lillian pushed off the side of the well and began sliding down the rope. After four or five feet the rope groaned ominously. A second later there was a snap and it came loose. She plummeted the rest of the way down the well and crashed beneath the surface of the water.

She sank until she hit the rocky bottom of the well and the breath was blasted from her lungs. A dizzying few moments passed until she recovered from the blow. She kicked off the well bottom, furiously struggling for the surface. The compulsion to breath was too strong though, she felt water fill her lungs and all thoughts of swimming fled. She choked and sank back toward the bottom, desperately trying to find breath that would not come.

Her vision was narrowing, time was short.