The Hunt

Tilly ran as hard as she could. She ignored the burning in her lungs. She disregarded the pain in her bare feet too. She refused to focus on the chill air as it bit into her naked flesh. She just concentrated on pumping her legs and putting as much distance between her and Roland as she could.

Five years now, she had been a slave. Since her parents sold her, on coming to her majority, to the Baron. Five years as Roland's personal fuck toy. Her parents thought they were selling her into service to a good home, they had not counted on the Baron's youngest son. Even though he was her master, and aged thirty-two, Tilly thought of the sick twisted monster, Roland, as nothing but a boy.

The Baron had four children. Anthony, the eldest, was like his father. Rotund, jolly and brash. He, again like his father, treated the slaves on the estate as impersonal things. He expected no backchat and complete obedience. He fucked in a brusque, physical way, and would usually send any girl he used away with a swat to the backside, and no more thought than that. Being fucked by the Baron or Anthony was considered a pleasurable inconvenience.

The remaining three of the Baron's offspring were all aficionados of BDSM. But all three had very different ideas of just what that meant. Julien liked to play with rope. He seemed endlessly fascinated with ways to tie a slave up. Tilly had heard another slave call it Shibari, but whatever it was, it rarely hurt. The girls in Master Julien's stable strove hard to please their owner, for fear of being sold. They knew a soft gig when it landed in their laps.

Mistress Matilda, Matty to her brothers, Mistress Em to the slaves, liked dressing her slaves up. After five years naked, Tilly did not know what she would think of clothes if they were forced upon her. But, Mistress Em did not dress her slaves in regular clothes. Rubber catsuits, hobble dresses, vinyl maids uniforms, leather gimp outfits, cruel corsets, choking posture collars and constricting straight-jackets. Mistress Em delighted in tormenting her slaves with clothes. All her stable of slaves teetered about in ballet boots. All of them wore ensembles of tight glossy fabric, that left little to the imagination, and often exaggerated or distorted a slave's natural features.

Roland was a sadist. Roland dressed his slaves in welts and bruises. Roland liked to hear his slaves scream, cry, sob and wail. Every so often, he'd 'accidentally' kill one. Going too far with breath play, mock hangings or crucifixions. Roland was a monster.

Even now, as Tilly ran, she gritted her teeth as scabs on her back pulled at her exertion. Tilly was motivated like no other of the slaves today. As Roland had put her in the trap, he'd whispered in her ear, "I'm getting tired of you, cunt. If I catch you today, it's your corpse I'll bring home."

But Tilly had a plan. This year Tilly was not going to fall into Roland's clutches. Frankly, she did not care which other members of the family caught her. She held no illusions of being able to actually escape the estate. Nor did she think there was anything she could do to stop Roland.

But each year the Baron insisted on a hunt being held. The Slave Hunt. In truth, it was a hunt in name only. For the ever-present collar, welded snugly about her throat was broadcasting her location to the family even now.

Yet three weeks ago, Tilly had gotten lucky. For a precious week, she had been summoned to kitchen duty. One of her sister slaves had fallen ill, too ill to work. The Baron had demanded Roland supply the replacement, and Roland had sent her.

The kitchen slaves had assisted by turning a blind eye. They dare not actually help. But what they did not see... Tilly hid what she needed out by the bins. Kitchen foil, two bits of broken mirror and a basting pipette. She clutched them to her chest as she ran. The slaves had an hour to run and hide. Then the Baron would fire the canon, and the hunt would begin.

The hunters were mounted on quad bikes. Laptops, tacking the slaves, mounted on the handlebars. They used dogs, to flush their prey, and carried net-firing guns and bolas too. The Baron merely concentrated on rounding up his favourites, his children wisely leaving them uncaught if they flushed them out accidentally. But they competed ferociously for the rest. The bragging rites, and the largest stable of slaves, meant a lot to these idle, congenitally affluent, wastrels. How their prey felt about this, they cared not one jot.

Tilly was running away from the other slaves. They, like flocking birds or schooling fish, felt there was safety in numbers. Unfortunately, that also meant she was running towards the front of the estate, the farm, and the boundary she was not allowed to cross. But what she wanted was a building. To get away with her plan, she needed a plausible reason for her collar to stop broadcasting. Interference from a building, like a metal barn, would do nicely.

Arriving at the outbuilding, Tilly allowed herself a minute to catch her breath. She then set to work with the foil. Pulling it off the cardboard tube, she wrapped it around her collar. Pulling the thing away from her throat and stuffing it in the gap, she endeavoured to smother the fetter in foil. A quiet ping followed by the collar announcing, "WiFi signal lost. Slave return to the manor and request technical support." This repeated and did not stop.

Tilly thought hard. The message was good as it meant her plan was working. But she had not counted on her collar making any noise. It could give her away. Looking about, she spotted some hessian sacking. Tearing it into strips, she wrapped it about her neck to smother the sound from the collar.

Tilly did not dare risk the GPS being disabled too. It would shock her unconscious if she left the estate. But she was off the hunter's screens now and had to take advantage of that. Tilly started running again. This time towards the swamp.

It was not really a swamp, but more a silted-up pond. A past owner of the estate had once been keen on fishing. But the stream that fed it did not flow very fast, and it was surrounded by trees. After decades of neglect, it was a near-stagnant pool filled with rotting vegetation and very few fish.

Halfway there, the cannon boomed out, and Tilly dropped to the ground. There was no point masking the collar's signal and getting caught running out in the open. She rolled sideways off the track she had been running along, down into a fetid ditch to the side. As she cowered, the distinctive sound of dogs howling, and the roar of the quad's engines could be heard. The sound sent a chill of fear over Tilly and spurred her to start moving once more.

Squelching through the mud, and nettles, in the ditch, brambles scratched and caught on the rings set in her flesh by Roland. The whole experience was on par with one of his more diabolical sessions. Only the thought that this could end any future repeats motivated her to keep moving.

Eventually, scratched, stung and covered in mud, she reached a point where she would have to break cover. Open ground stood between her and the copse surrounding the swamp. Taking the shards of mirror, she rammed them into the tube that had once held the foil, making a makeshift periscope. Carefully she used it to scan the area. Confident she was in the clear, she climbed up and sprinted for the copse.

Even here, the ground was sodden. While it did not hurt to run upon, the soft going drained Tilly's strength as the mud squelched up between her toes. The sound of a quad approaching flooded her system with adrenaline, and she dove through another stand of nettles into cover. Unsure if she had been spotted, she ploughed on until she reached the edge of the water. Trying hard not to cause ripples, she slipped into the freezing water hidden beneath a cloying blanket of duckweed. Slowly moving out into the water, her feet sunk into the rotting vegetation and silt. Tilly fervently hoped there were no leeches in the pool.

Reaching a patch of waterlilies, Tilly discarded the rubber bulb of the baster and then placed the thin end in her mouth. Her makeshift snorkel ready, she listened intently whilst using the periscope to peer above the white blossoms of the lilies.

Roland stepped out of the trees. Tilly nearly squealed in fright. Moving as slowly as she dared, she lowered the cardboard tube and sank under the water. Holding on to lily stems to keep herself under, Tilly tried to quietly breathe through the glass tube of the baster. She hoped any movement of the plants above would be put down to fish, and not a hiding slave girl.

Unable to see above, through the glowing green ceiling of the duckweed, Tilly steeled herself for a long wait. She had to be certain Roland had left the area. At one point, Tilly was certain she heard some shouting. Later still, she definitely heard a quad close by, along with the sound of hounds. Perhaps the dogs had tracked her to the water, and they were trying to work out where she left. Tilly prayed they did not work out she was still in the water.

Later still, she started to shake with cold. Frightened her convulsions would give her away, she risked raising her head. She tried lifting her periscope, but it had become sodden and limp from its time underwater. Standing up a little taller, she slowly scanned her surroundings.

Matilda was circling the edge of the water. Tilly ducked back down. Mistress Em had been waking away, so would not have seen her. Tilly considered her options. Ideally, she would have rather been caught by Anthony or Julien. But even Matilda was preferable to another day in Roland's cage. Her mind made up, she started stripping the sackcloth and foil from her collar. Tilly wanted to keep that trick a secret, so she could use it again. She rolled it all into a ball, and pushed it down into the mud, along with the glass tube of the baster.

She then surfaced and started wading out of the water, trying to appear stealthy but at the same time making some noise to alert Matilda. It clearly worked, as just as she climbed out, she was enveloped with a net. Tangled in the coarse weave, she tumbled onto her side. In short order, a leather-clad Matilda stood over her.

"Well done, slave," she praised, "you are the last to be caught. Were you hiding in that pond all along?"

"Thank you, Mistress. Yes, Mistress, in amongst the lilies."

"How ingenious, I know Roland will be upset you have escaped him. Let's get you trussed up before he gets here, hmm?"

Tilly had never been so eager to help her owner bind her. She did not truly relax until Mistress Em slung her across the back of the quad next to two other bound slave girls. Three was a good haul. Mistress could have won the hunt this year.

As the quad bumped over the rough terrain back to the manor house, one of the other girls smiled at Tilly. Talking was pointless over the noise of the air-cooled motor, but the girl mouthed clearly, "Roland is angry."

Tilly silently mouthed back, "How many did he catch?"

"One... Joanna." That was a shock. Joanna was one of the Baron's favourites.

Matilda rode up onto a track, and the ride became a lot smoother. Then, abruptly, they came to a halt. Tilly could see nothing except one of her fellow slaves, and the ground below. But they were not on the gravel of the manor house drive.

Suddenly Roland's voice rang out, "Sorry, Sis, but you have one of mine there. Hand her over, please."

"Don't be any more stupid than you are usually, little brother. You are well aware of the rules of the hunt."

"Have a heart, Matty. I only caught Joanna, and you know full well, Dad will want her back."

"Not my problem, Rolly. These three are mine, it's not my fault you are rubbish at hunting."

"You fucking cow, Matty. Hand the bitch over now, or I'll be telling Dad about that matter with the..."

"Let me stop you there, Roland," interrupted Matilda. "Before you start brandishing threats about, consider your own situation viz a viz three dead slaves in five years. The statute of limitations on slave deaths is ten years, you know. Plus I'm sure you remember what dear Papa said would happen if another died in your custody? People in glass houses and all that, hmm? Now get back on your bike, and take Joanna home. Who knows? Dad may let you have her for a year. But woe betides you if her back ends up in the same state as Lily here."

"Hmph, the bitch is called Tilly."

"Not anymore, little brother. I'm going to call her Lily, after the flowers I found her in."

"You soppy cow!"

"Oh, fuck off, Roland. Before I decide to call that nice inspector Munroe, who came calling after Agather passed away on your crucifix."

There was no more talking. Just the sound of Roland's quad retreating into the distance. Then a warm hand on Tilly's rear.

"You were last caught, Lily. So you skip the hunt next year. That gives me two years with you for certain. Plus, if you let me know how you did it, I am sure we can repeat today's performance."

I'm called Lily now, thought the newly named slave. To her new owner, she responded, "Yes, Mistress, thank you, Mistress."

As the quad bike started up once more Lily wondered to herself, "Just how bad are ballet boots?"