The usual disclaimers apply to all chapters in this series. This is a work of fiction intended solely for the edification and enjoyment of adults of legal age. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. Mention or description of any institution is only for background purposes and does not mean or imply any connection with or disrespect to that institution. All rights reserved subject to Nifty's terms of use. First time readers can learn more about the Colonel by reading "With a Flip of a Coin" posted in Nifty's Gay Authoritarian and Gay College sections in March and April 2012.
The Colonel retrieved a hiking stick from the truck bed and, without looking back, strode off to the trailhead. Obediently, but without a hiking stick of his own, the sergeant fell in behind. For thirty minutes, or maybe an hour, they marched through the woods, always going up, never seeing or hearing another human being. The buck's goosebumps from the auroral chilliness gave way to a healthy glow which, under the weight of the hardpacked sack on his back, led to a sheen of sweat all over his exposed skin. He concentrated totally on keeping stride, on holding his burden in place, on stepping safely in the tangle of undertree growth, soon having no idea where he was or which way led back to the truck. Even the trail disappeared as the officer veered into a stand of bushes, brushing them away with his hand, the sergeant following along and doing the same. The sharp branches whacked against his exposed flesh, leaving red stripes and welts everywhere not covered by boots or shorts or backpack.
Without warning they broke free into a clearing, one surrounded by head-high bushes on three sides and a steep fifty foot slope on the fourth one. Four lodgepole pine trees were scattered about the clearing, each a foot or so in diameter and pointing straight up to the canopy. The Colonel halted and so did Knoyle. Wordlessly, the officer walked around behind the NCO, reached into a side compartment of the pack, retrieved a water bottle, stepped back and said, "Windsprint to the top, then back down, ten times, ten pushups each time at each end. Move out!"
"Yes, sir!" barked the burdened buck sergeant, pushing off with his boots and pumping his bare muscled arms furiously as his climbed up the side of the lightly wooded slope. Without him realizing it, and without his lungs having a chance to adjust to Laramie's seventy-two hundred feet above sea level, the hike had taken him up to nine thousand feet. He reached the top easily enough but breathing hard. He knocked out ten pushups, jumped back to his feet and then half-ran, half-slid down the slope to the clearing where the Colonel was nonchalantly refreshing himself with swigs of water. The soldier dropped to the ground, knocked out ten pushups (sounding off each number with a "Sir!"), jumped back up and sprinted back up the slope.
On and on he did this, each sprint a little slower than its predecessor, each set of pushups a little harder than the set before, his lungs gasping a little harder with each round, his face getting redder with each series, the sweat beginning to get into his hair and eyes. Even so, this was nothing. He was an Army-trained, battle-hardened specimen of American manhood. No old goat of a full bird was going to get the best of him, especially with a bunch of silly calisthenics. Hell, he had outlasted every one of his stickmates when playing poker for pushups at Benning and Bragg. This was a walk in the park, and he grinned to himself at the thought.
Catching his second wind, the buck sergeant completed his pushups on the ridgeline, double timed down the slope, dropped to the front leaning rest position in the clearing, knocked out his last and loudest of twenty sets of pushups and bounced back up to the position of attention.
"Report!" ordered the Colonel.
"Sir!" barked the NCO holding a snappy salute in place, "Sergeant Knoyle reporting for further duty, Sir!"
The officer returned the salute, then commanded "Drop to palms and toes, soldier."
The buck immediately and unthinkingly dropped back to the ground, his back as straight as the lodgepole pines and his head pointing to the ground. Then he felt the Colonel picking up his hiking boots and commanding, "Up the hill, soldier, wheel barrow style!"
The sergeant started handclimbing up the hill. This was his chance to wear out the Old Man! But the Colonel never so much as gasped anywhere up the slope. When they reached the ridgeline, the officer dropped the NCO's feet and commanded "Low crawl back down!" Heedless of the roots and sticks poking at him, the soldier shoved his way down the hill, pecs and abs scraping against the hillside, elbows out and churning away. Ten times they wheel barrowed up and ten times the trainee low crawled down.
When they reached the clearing after the last descent, the Colonel ordered "Airplane!" Immediately the sergeant lifted his legs straight back together and his arms straight out in front of his supine half-naked body, eyes forward. He held the painful position unflinchingly. While he did so, he felt the officer opening the top flap of the field pack still on his back and groping through the contents. Then he saw the Colonel strapping a pair of leather cuffs onto his raised-up wrists, then hooking them together with a steel double eye bolt connecting to D rings, one on each cuff. Before he had time to process what might be happening, he heard another command: "Back up the hill, soldier, wheel barrow style!"
With that the Colonel yanked the sergeant's booted legs back up in the air, and off they went. This time, the soldier had to bounce his cuffed hands forward in tandem, pumping his arms mercilessly, boing, boing, boing, all the way up to the top. When they reached it, the officer dropped the NCO's boots and ordered "Low crawl back down!" The wrist cuffs forced the soldier to slither like a snake, unable to throw his arms out to either side. He wriggled first to one side and then the other. When he reached the clearing, the older man picked back up his booted feet and pushed him like a wheel barrow back up the slope only to order him to crawl his way back down, up and down, ten round trips in all. A few times he lost control and rolled downhill sideways for several rotations before regaining his balance. He was panting hard when he finally reached the bottom of the final crawl fall down the slope.
The Colonel reached down to the supine soldier's hands and unclicked the eyebolt holding them together. "Three and a half pushups!" he commanded.
The sergeant had been through this drill before. His personal record was six minutes in the "half pushup" position. This time, however, he had a full field pack on his back, he had already done two hundred pushups and his arms were getting sore. Still, no man had ever broken him. He wasn't about to let this over-the-hill officer asshole be the first to do so.
"One half, sir!" he called out as his bare chest came within three inches of the dirt. "One, sir!" he barked as his arms finished lifting him to a fully raised position. "One and a half, sir!" he called as again his chest lowered almost to the ground. "Two, sir!" as his arms stretched straight up. "Two and a half, sir!" as he felt the grass tickle his pecs. "Three, sir!" as his arms went straight for what would be the last time until he survived this drill. "Three and a half, sir!" And, as he yelled that report, his strong but tiring arms hunched down in the bent elbow position, his naked chest and abs hovering three inches above the dirt clearing floor, the field pack intensifying the positional bondage in which the Colonel had placed him. Sweat dripped down his face. More sweat dropped unseen from his hairy armpits to the ground. His bare legs held the ramrod straight position, his booted feet firmly planted. "Yeah," he thought to himself, "I can do this."
The Colonel stood in front of the sergeant, so close that the officer's right boot's toe was under the soldier's sweating chin. "Eyes up, sergeant!" the Colonel commanded. The NCO complied by craning his neck up, forcing himself to look the older man in the eye. The Colonel looked down with his harshest glare and, in his deepest command voice, said, "Are you worthy to obey my commands?"
The buck was concentrating too hard on holding his position to process those words' full meaning. "Sir, yes, sir!" he roboticly responded.
Then the Colonel cut through the young soldier's brain fog with a chilling question: "Are you worthy to lick my boots?"
The sergeant was stuck. A yes meant he would demean himself by becoming a bootlicker. A no meant he would denigrate his own worth. With split second clarity he gave what he thought would be the only safe response: "Sir, I am worthy to obey any lawful command."
The Colonel grinningly replied, "No regs, no limits, remember, soldier? Or do you want to back out on that now?"
The sergeant's angry pride washed away any common sense as he determinedly stated, "Sir, no regs, no limits, sir. I will obey whatever you order and beat any challenge you make!"
He was still glaring eye to eye, his neck bent awkwardly upward, when to his amazement the Colonel spat a honker that hit him squarely in the face. While the buck sergeant was still trying to understand what just happened, the officer commanded "Open your mouth, soldier!" and the young man complied. Another gob of spit flew down, splattering into his mouth. "Now use that to give my boot a spit shine, sergeant!" the older man ordered.
Half closing his mouth, the supine sergeant lowered his head to the waiting dust-covered boot. As he did so, he felt increased pressure on his back and turned to his right to confirm that the Colonel's bent left leg was pressing down on the field pack. "An order is an order," he told himself, "and this is nothing compared to the courses I maxed." And with that self-reassuring thought, the NCO stuck out his tongue and licked the top of the officer's boot. After a few seconds he was relieved to feel the weight decrease on his back, only to have the spit-cleaned boot replaced by its dirty companion and the increased pressure return to the field pack. He obligingly licked the second boot as clean as the first. Then the Colonel stepped back, leaving the sergeant's now-quivering body focused on holding the half-pushup position.
"Are you a bootlicker, soldier?"
"Yes, sir!"
"Say it, soldier."
"I am a bootlicker, sir!"
"Whose bootlicker are you, sergeant?"
"Sir, I am the Colonel's bootlicker, sir!"
"On your feet, soldier!" he heard, and instantly snapped back up to attention. Despite his best efforts to conceal it, his biceps trembled and his chest heaved in and out as his lungs silently shrieked for more of the mountain-thinned air. The Colonel stepped up in front of him, released both backpack straps, then stepped around and behind him and lifted the heavy load off his slightly aching shoulders. The NCO stood up a wee bit taller, relieved of his burden for the first time since leaving the parking lot. While he was motionless, in verbal bondage, his arms at his side, his fingers properly curled to lightly touch his palms, the officer behind him pulled a four-foot steel chain out of the backpack, wrapped it around and around Knoyle's left wrist, then secured it with a quick link. He then did the same to the other wrist.
"Dying cockroach!" snapped the officer.
The buck sergeant, already beginning to recover from his climbing up and down, dropped to the ground, turned over onto his back, thrust his weighted arms, booted legs and head into the air and waved all five appendages slowly while chanting "I am a dying cockroach. I am a dying cockroach. I am a dying cockroach."
Both military men knew that this harassment would last for five minutes or more. To the sergeant, it was actually a chance to take a breather and lower his heart rate back down. To the Colonel, it was an opportunity to empty the backpack outside the soldier's limited line of vision. The officer unfurled the bedroll that had rested below the pack and spread the blanket out flat. Then he pulled each chain out and laid it out on the blanket. After that came all the links and locks, all the leather apparatus and torture implements. Last came the remaining water bottles and the food. Once all supplies were spread out and in order, he returned his position to the singsong chanting soldier.
"Keep moving but stop speaking, soldier." The NCO obeyed. "On my command you will go to your knees, ankles crossed, hands behind your head, chin up, eyes front. Do so NOW!" And with that the young buck sergeant, a gaysex virgin, unwittingly assumed for the first time the kneeling slave display position.
"This is the display position, soldier. When I command "Display!" you will assume this position immediately. Do you understand, sergeant?"
"Sir, yes, sir!"
The Colonel stepped up to his prey and fed him water from a bottle. The young man gulped it all down, grateful to be rehydrated. The older man then removed the chains from around the wrist cuffs. But the officer had no intention of letting the soldier relax, much less giving him an opportunity to stretch his arm muscles. The Colonel drank in one last gaze of the sergeant kneeling before him, armpits exposed and damp, naked torso wet with sweat, arms trembling even as they held the back of the sergeant's head. He ordered the soldier to his feet, facing the blanket. Before the sergeant could mentally inventory everything spread out before him, the officer commanded him to pick up a ten-foot length of chain, attach a quick link to one chain end, and climb one of the lodgepole pines up to its lowest branch.
Kevin Knoyle had always enjoyed climbing trees. His earliest memories included the ornamental crabapple tree in his backyard and seeing how high up it he could go. As he grew older he tested himself on different trees, with one hand only or using legs only or without using legs.
The barked tree trunk in front of him was a challenge but one he could meet. He pulled himself up a couple of feet at a time, ignoring the scraping of the bark against his chest and abs, the heavy chain draped around his neck. When he reached the lowest branch, he heard the Colonel ordering him to encircle the quick-linked chain end around the trunk just above the branch junction and secure it with the link, letting the other eight feet of chain hang down. Once that was done, he scurried back down, retrieved a second chain of equal length to the first, climbed another lodgepole and repeated the chain-looping task.
When he came back down, the officer ordered him to stand halfway between the two chain-draped pines and assume the jumping jack position. Then the Colonel ordered him to bring his feet together, keeping his arms diagonally stretched up and out. The older man stood in front of the buck and eyebolted first one cuffed wrist and then the other to the dangling chains, stretching out both arms and chains. The Colonel stared right into the sergeant's eyes and, without breaking eye contact, used his hands to open and drop the NCO's hiking shorts, then ordered him to step out of them. Now the sergeant was wearing only his jockstrap, his dog tags, his boots, his boot socks and the wrist cuffs.
Apparently, while he had been climbing the pines, his new commander had affixed other chains to the bases of the trees. The Colonel ordered him back into the full jumping jack position, then cuffed and chained his outstretched ankles in opposite directions. Finally, the officer took a fifth link of chain and fastened it to both ankle cuffs, preventing the soldier's feet from stretching farther than they already had.
The sergeant was not surprised when, from behind him, the Colonel buckled a leather blindfold in place. The sergeant was quite surprised when he felt a hard plastic dick pushed into his mouth. He could not complain, and besides he had no permission to speak, so he accepted it and wrapped his tongue and palate around it as best he could. He felt straps pulling all around his skull, not knowing what a head harness was (or, for that matter, what a penis gag was) but understanding that something was clamping his jaws shut and holding the hard dick thing firmly in his mouth.
So here he was, in the middle of nowhere, no one else around except his challenger, his body naked between his neck and his socktops except for his jockstrap, with cuffs and chains pulling his sweaty body into a human X, his chest still heaving from the combination of forced calisthenics and thin mountain air, his vision, speech and senses of taste and smell gone, and his body totally exposed to whatever the Colonel decided to inflict next.