Koos Smit

Johan

Chapters 13-17

Chapter 13

The goading pays off, however, as they actually exceed their production targets and so are fortunate to escape another excruciating encounter with Hein's sambok at the whipping post this evening. They feel absurdly grateful to Spyker for this.

They lie on their bellies on the dirt floor of the hok talking about the events of the day.

"That Spyker is a really tough boss," says Jan admiringly.

"Ja, Stompie was an old granny compared with Spyker!" says Lukas.

"I think I got more lashes these two days than I ever got in a whole week before!"

"Ja, I noticed you just about got a permanent hard on!" laughs Lukas.

Jan punches Lukas on the arm for reply, "I saw you had a boner too plenty of times!"

"Ja ..," admits Lukas, "I dunno what it is, but I never got that with Stompie."

"With Stompie, when he whips you it's like he's sorry he has to do it and that makes you feel bad. But when Spyker whips you and he gives you that grin and he's got that huge boner, you know he likes it and you want him to whip you more because it's like he likes you and you want him to like you more and…," Jan trails off.

Lukas looks at Jan quizzically.

"OK, so now you think I'm nuts," says Jan.

"I always thought you was nuts!" says Lukas, "But… I must be nuts too, "cause I feel the same!"

A couple of hours later, when all the young quarry slaves are in their cots, and all that can be heard in the huts are the gentle sounds of sleep mingled with the more urgent sounds of strong young boys enjoying each other's hard muscled bodies, the two youngsters are surprised when Spyker wakes them and lets them out of the hok. He takes them to the nearest shower block. "You guys are filthy – go shower – and wash prop'ly – I'm gonna check when you finished!" he orders.

Spyker watches them as they shower. Jan and Lukas are a little fearful about this unusual development but they have seen the lustful glint in Spyker's eyes over the past few days and now the straining front of his shorts makes it fairly obvious to the sexually experienced thirteen year olds what he wants.

The cold water and the cheap green liquid detergent seem like nearly impossible luxury to the filthy pair and they feel quite rejuvenated and cheerful when they emerge, clean and glowing.

They look each other over with grinning pleasure at the transformation. Bright blue eyes and bristled straw-blonde hair contrast strongly with their deep bronze all-over tans. Their stocky muscular bodies are lightly covered with a fine down that glistens gold against the brown smoothness of their adolescent skin. A sparse tuft of sandy curls nestles above each boy's uncut cock, thick, long and slowly lengthening in anticipation of pleasuring their new master and being pleasured in return. Big balls hang low between thick muscled thighs, like the equipment of a prize bull. Bulging calves taper down to solid ankles and hard brown feet, broad and leathery soled.

Now Spyker's cock, inordinately large for a fifteen year old, pushes past the restraining bounds of his waistband and stretches its swollen purple head up past his navel to pulse like a live thing against the muscular ridges of his brown belly.

Impatiently, Spyker pushes his shorts down to his ankles and steps out of them. His gigantic erected cock swings to the horizontal under its own weight. Jan and Lukas gaze at it entranced, licking their lips involuntarily, their own cocks springing instantly to full erection.

Without waiting for an invitation, the two younger boys step hastily up to Spyker and sink to their knees in front of him, their mouths open as their heads come together on either side of Spyker's cock, taking it between their wide wet lips and working expertly up and down its straining length.

When they reach the throbbing tip, Jan and Lukas each take turns to encircle the swollen head, teasing it to ever greater heights of pleasure with their strong tongues while their practiced fingers work the sensitive under belly of Spyker's shaft and his tightly drawn up balls.

Soon the boys have Spyker crooning softly, his hips thrusting involuntarily as he tries to prolong the brief bursts of pleasure from the tantalizing tattoo the boys' lips play on the tip of his cock.

It is Jan's turn when Spyker cannot bear it any longer. Spyker puts both his big hands on the smooth shaven back of Jan's head and pulls Jan onto his cock, shoving it hard into Jan's broad mouth and deep into his throat. Jan is taken by surprise and he has a moment of panic as he chokes momentarily, involuntarily clamping his teeth into Spyker's cock as he does so.

Spyker roars like a wounded bull and instantly slaps Jan against the side of his head, sending him sprawling across the soapy slick concrete floor of the shower. Spyker scrambles after Jan, kicking him wherever he can land his hard bare feet as Jan slithers, twists and ducks to get away, yelling, "I'm sorry boss, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do that! Please boss, no!"

Lukas also takes a few kicks and punches as he bravely tries to interpose his body between Spyker and Jan, pleading all the while for his friend, "Please boss, we'll make you feel better, we'll do it real good, I promise!"

Spyker calms down quickly, his consuming lust for the two blonde boys winning over his fury.

"OK," he says, breathing heavily, "But first Jan's gotta be punished for being careless with my cock in his mouth!"

"Sure, boss, anything!" says Lukas, expansively.

"Ja… sure, boss," says Jan, rather less certainly, as he gets to his feet.

Spyker picks up his strap from where he had cast it down on the floor. It has a thick leather lash about 2 centimeters [¾ inch] wide and 50 centimeters [20 inches] long, fixed to the end of a wooden handle about 30 centimeters [12 inches] long. He goes over to a washbasin and turns on a tap, letting the water run over the leather lash until it is soaked and swollen with water. He turns off the tap and swings the strap through the air a few times before bringing it to crack against the cement wall with a report like a pistol shot. Both Jan and Lukas flinch at the sound and stare transfixed at the wet brown stripe the strap leaves against the wall. Jan feels the skin on his back crawl at the thought of the wet and heavy strap striping his own body like that. The thought starts a tingle in the tip of his cock also.

"Come here!" orders Spyker.

Jan obeys.

"Stand in front of the washbasin, bend over, grip the taps and spread your legs!" he commands.

Jan does as Spyker orders, looking anxiously back over his shoulder at Spyker.

"Face your front!" snaps Spyker, and Jan jerks his head forward.

Spyker hands the strap to Lukas.

"Now this what we're gonna do… You gonna whip your mate's arse until I'm ready to fuck it… and then you gonna whip his back while I fuck his arse… and then you gonna fuck his arse while I whip him some more… and then I'm gonna fuck you… and after that… we'll see!"

Lukas's eyes sparkle and he passes his tongue over his lips as he grips the wooden handle of the strap, his cock rising rapidly with expectation as he eagerly takes station behind Jan. He swings the strap through the air a couple of times, getting the feel of it, as he focuses his attention on his friend's enticing brown buttocks, smooth, round and hard, the muscles taut with anticipation.

Lukas has spanked Jan on the bare arse with his hand before, when they were having sex and Jan asked him to. He enjoyed that as much as Jan did. But this is the first time he has ever had the opportunity to give his friend a full on whipping and Lukas finds it intensely exciting. Jan's ramrod stiff penis, pressed up hard against his horizontal belly, announces that Jan finds it just as exciting.

Lukas lifts the strap high over his shoulder and whips it down with all his strength to crack against those delectable buttocks with a force that drives Jan up onto his leathery toes, throws back his head, arches his muscled back and expels a long hiss of breath over Jan's clenched teeth. A red welt mushrooms instantly over the smooth brown skin of his buttocks.

Jan remains on his toes for the following strokes, his thick calf muscles bulging under his weight, his buttocks clenched and the long muscles in his back bunched and quivering.

Again and again Lukas whips Jan's buttocks, his cock swelling and throbbing under the stimulus of his friend's groans of pain and way his muscles writhe and jerk under each stroke like snakes in a silk bag.

After a while Spyker motions Lukas to stop while he moves in behind Jan, rapidly lubricating his gigantic dick with some liquid detergent before gripping Jan by the waist and inserting his dick into Jan's arsehole. Thick though it is, his rock hard dick slides effortlessly into Jan's well used hole.

Spyker starts pumping Jan's arse slowly, becoming gradually faster as he finds his rhythm and Jan responds to his movements. Then Spyker motions Lukas to start whipping Jan's bent over back. Lukas obeys with alacrity. Jan's body bucks and jerks under the whip and the strength of the spasm with which Jan's bum ring grips Spyker's thrusting cock with each searing stroke just about sends Spyker into orbit. Soon all three boys are moving in a co-ordinated rhythm, panting with effort and grunting and moaning their pleasure, with Jan's moans rising sharply each time the heavy leather strap bites into the writhing muscles of his back.

Soon Spyker reaches a long and shuddering climax, shooting his hot wet load deep inside Jan. Lukas can hardly restrain himself and he almost pushes Spyker out of the way in his rush to insert his own nearly exploding penis into his friend's cum soaked arse. After barely twenty frenzied shoves, Lukas also shoots his wad into Jan, crying out with ecstatic pleasure as he does so. Spyker has not yet even had a chance to pick up the strap that Lukas dropped when Lukas withdraws his still hard and still dribbling penis with a plopping sound and looks eagerly at his master for further directions.

Jan now grabs his own stiff and quivering cock and starts pumping it furiously to climax, but suddenly there is an explosion of pain against his thighs as Spyker swings his strap and yells at him.

"Who told you to have a wank, huh?"

Jan stops at once. "Sorry, boss!" he gasps

Spyker grabs Jan's cock and squeezes it hard. Jan winces.

"This belongs to me, now!" he hisses in Jan's ear, "You wank only when I tell you… you got that?"

"Yes boss!"

"From now on I catch either of you wasting your spunk on each other without my say so you gonna wish you were never born… you got that?"

"Geez, boss," says Lukas as the implication of this order dawns on him, "Jan and me fuck every night… sometimes two, three times! What about the nights you don't want us?"

"Tough shit… you save yourselves for me… you go a couple days without, you be even hotter for my cock… you better get used to it!"

Spyker grins maliciously.

"In fact," he says, "You can start getting used to it right now… back to the hok with you… there's no cumming for you tonight!"

Spyker leads the two boys back to the hok. Jan is wound up so tight sexually that his cock remains firmly erected, its purple head swollen and throbbing. He feels like his balls are going to explode and his brain is about to boil in the heat of his frustration.

A couple of hours later, with the whole camp in darkness and Spyker long gone to bed, Lukas takes pity on his friend and sucks his still hard cock to climax, swallowing every drop of the hot gushes of semen that fill his mouth and licking his cock clean of every trace of the evidence of Jan's disobedience.

At the Nyati Agoge Johan and Tiaan are enjoying their second and last night alone in the cadet barracks. Tomorrow the cadets return from their survival course and Captain Stander has told the two boys to expect things to be a little different when they are back.

It has been a day of marvelous revelations since they were told that the General would allow them to stay and would take up their cause with the appropriate authorities.

First the captain told them what the Nyati Agoge is.

""Agoge" is the Spartan word for a military school," he explained, "And that is what we are… a military school for boys of high school age… 13 to 18 years. Our country is going through hard times and will be in need of good leaders in the difficult years that lie ahead. We believe… actually, General Van Dyk's vision is that great leaders can be trained … and the earlier one starts the better. The General also believes that military leadership is the highest, most honorable and most selfless form of leadership and therefore the best vehicle to train our leaders in all walks of life – not just the military. That is why the General made his family estate and his considerable fortune available to establish this elite school. Very few people know of this place. It is not advertised or listed anywhere. There is no way of applying to come here even if you know about it. The boys who come here are here by invitation, selected by a secret process from schools all over the country."

"Wow, it must cost their parents a fortune," says Johan, thinking of his poor mother's struggles to pay for the few extras his old school was able to provide… seems like a hundred years ago now.

"They don't pay a cent to be here. The government and the General's Foundation cover all the costs."

"The General must be loaded!" says Tiaan.

"Well, the General is the last in a long line of very wealthy farmers and businessmen. He never married, he has no children and no living relatives and he regards this project both as his greatest contribution to the country and his own memorial."

The boys think over what the captain has been saying.

"So the cadets here are boys like us – not soldiers?" says Tiaan.

"Well, they are boys of your age… and older… but, of course, they come from very different backgrounds," says the captain.

The boys look crestfallen. "You mean they're all rich kids?," says Johan

"Not at all… some of them are from very poor families. What I mean is that… well… none of them comes from a… ah… well… a reformatory."

"Ja, I understand," says Johan, disappointment in his voice, "So what are we gonna do here then… work in the garden or what?"

The captain laughs. "No, you are going to join the same program. But because you didn't come in the usual way, you're going to be on probation."

"Probation?," the boys echo.

"It means a tryout. In other words, it'll be up to you if you get a permanent place here or not."

Their faces light up.

"Before you get too excited, I should just remind you of two things : First, the program is tough… although I don't believe that will be a problem for you seeing what you've been through already. Second, there is a lot of legal stuff to get through before you will be completely free. We are going to try our best but you must understand that if it does not work we will have no choice but to hand you back to the Boys' Farm."

"We understand," says Johan, "And thanks for being willing to give us a chance. We won't let you down."

"Somehow, I believe you," says the captain.

The captain then spent some time outlining the program that they would be following and explaining what would be expected of them.

"Why did the General use the Spartan word… agoge… instead of just calling it Nyati Military School," asks Johan.

"Well the Spartans were probably the world's toughest and bravest soldiers of all time. When they were seven years old they were taken from their parents and put into the agoge to be trained as warriors. All day and every day they would be put through very hard and tough physical training. They never wore shoes, they were given only piece of cloth to wear every year, though most of their training was done naked. They washed in the river. They slept on the ground on rushes that they had to break off with their bare hands. They had to scavenge for their food many days, stealing it from the local farmers. If they were caught they would be severely whipped… not for stealing but for getting caught! They were whipped constantly so they could learn to bear pain without crying. In fact, once a year there was a special festival at the temple where the toughest boys would be whipped on the altar and they would compete to see who could take the most lashes without crying. Some died on the altar without making a sound.

They all took turns to be the leaders of their groups but whoever was the leader had to be obeyed absolutely and instantly. He had not only the right but the duty to punish the disobedient immediately and severely. In this way every boy learned not only to be a loyal and disciplined follower but a ruthless and decisive leader. Someone once described the Spartan army as an army made up entirely of officers, any one of whom was capable of leading the whole army."

"Do the cadets get whipped like the Spartan kids?" asks Tiaan

The captain laughs. "Probably not as much as the Spartan kids, but I suppose a lot more than in your average school, yes. We believe in strict discipline and we believe that corporal punishment is the most effective way to achieve that with boys."

"So how is it different from the quarry we just ran away from?," asks Johan.

"Well… apart from the excellent education, sport coaching and the many other benefits … I suppose the main difference is that you are free to leave at any time that you want to. In other words, if you stay here it will be because you choose to. In the quarry you were nothing more than a slave."

The boys turn this over in their minds.

"Ja, I can buy that," says Johan eventually.

"OK," says the captain, standing up and looking at his watch, "It's five o'clock – time for you to go for a run and a swim before dinner! We'll talk more tomorrow."

A little later the General and Captain Stander stand on the General's wide verandah sucking slowly at a scotch and watching the two muscular boys pounding back up the farm road skirting the far edge of the great lawn. The General frowns slightly.

"Are my eyes deceiving me or are those two completely naked, James?"

Captain Stander peers more intently at the boys.

"Yes, I believe they are, General."

The General chuckles, "Hmm… Fitting right in with the Spartan way are they?"

"Yes, General, I do believe they are!"

"From what the Mess Sergeant tells me about their bedtime activities, training naked is not the only Spartan custom they have adopted!"

"Sorry, General, I'm not with you?"

"I mean the Spartan practice of building comradeship on the physical love that boys of that age develop for each other."

"Oh, I see… are you having second thoughts about them then, General?"

"No, not at all! James, you have been here just a few weeks now and I realize that you have much to learn about the philosophy of the agoge and, hence, of this school. I have been revealing my vision to you in small doses because my views are somewhat radical and they do not sit well with all people.

I have no problem at all with any of the boys here having sexual relations with each other … most of them do at some time or other. I've always thought that men… and boys… who love each other and who, for that reason, are prepared to die for each other, make the best soldiers. The Spartans also thought so… that's why they encouraged the boys in the agoge to form physical relationships with each other and, in many cases, with their elders. You saw the effect of this when both of those boys this morning volunteered to go back to the reformatory so that the other could gain his freedom.

I mention the matter only so that you are aware of it… and because I thought it a good opportunity to introduce you to another facet of the philosophy that underpins this school."

Captain Stander's face lights up.

"General, you have no idea what it means to me to meet a kindred spirit. You will not be aware of it but I hold exactly the same views."

"I know," says the General.

"But, with the greatest respect, how could you possibly have known, General?"

"Let's just say that the anonymous contributions of a certain young officer to the Journal of Military Science on this subject are well known to me and were the principal motivation for the extremely attractive offer that I made you to get you to accept this appointment."

The captain blushes.

"Well, if you know about those, General, then you will also know of my admiration for your work and for your ideas."

The General smiles at his young protegë and then turns to watch Tiaan and Johan sprint the last hundred metres to the swimming pool and dive in.

"You know, James, sometimes the gods like to remind us that our own best efforts are as nothing compared with their most casual whim. I have the feeling that these two who have dropped in on us from the blue sky may yet turn out to be the best we will ever produce here."

Chapter 14

Being just fourteen, Johan and Tiaan are placed in the entry grade at the school, which, like any other South African high school, runs from standard 6 (grade 8 in today's terminology) to standard 10 (grade 12). This where the resemblance to other high schools ends, however: The curriculum includes many subjects, activities and sports that are not taught in other schools. The school as a whole is organized and run like an infantry battalion in which the grades are the companies and the classes are the platoons.

Each platoon is led by a cadet lieutenant and a cadet sergeant appointed from boys in the senior grades. A platoon consists of about 30 or so boys who are divided into sections of 8 to 10 each. Each section is led by a cadet corporal chosen from among the boys of that section for a month at a time. In the absence of the lieutenant or the sergeant the corporals choose one of their number to lead the platoon.

The three platoons in each grade form a company that is led by a cadet captain and a cadet sergeant major appointed from among the grade 12 boys. The most senior boy in the school, the equivalent of the head prefect in other schools, is the cadet major, who is appointed by the General from among the cadet captains.

This structure gives every boy a regular opportunity to practice his leadership skills at different levels of authority and responsibility that increase as they go through the grades.

Discipline in the Nyati Agoge is maintained mostly by the boys themselves, with very little intervention from the adult instructors and lecturers. The boys are taught to both give and demand absolute and instant obedience to the orders of leaders at any level. Insubordination is viewed as the cardinal crime and any disobedience or even any hesitation is instantly punished with a whipping administered on the spot, either with a cane on the bare arse or a short braided leather horsewhip across the bare back. Lesser crimes are dealt with at the daily defaulters call, held by the cadet captains at the end of each day, at which punishments ranging from extra duties through punishment PT to whippings may be imposed.

Punishment is generally administered by the boys themselves too. If any boy is to be whipped, the whipping is given to him by his corporal or by the platoon sergeant.

The only time that the boys are called to the office for punishment is if their subject marks fall below the accepted minimum or if they perform poorly in any of the required activities or in any of the regular physical strength or fitness tests. The school demands a high standard and no excuses are ever asked for or offered. The only consideration is whether the required standard was met and, if not, by how much. The boys quickly learn that to offer excuses or explanations is regarded as weakness and that weakness is itself a punishable crime in the Nyati Agoge, earning the culprit twice as many stripes as he would have received if he had taken his punishment in silence. Very few of the boys ever make this mistake a second time.

Johan and Tiaan are placed into the Ratel Platoon ("Ratel" is pronounced "rah-til"). This is the name that the boys of this eighth grade class have chosen for their platoon and the name will stay with the class as it moves through the grades and eventually passes out at the end of grade 12 in five years' time. The platoon's banner, honours, achievements and photographs of the boys through the years are placed in the Great Hall for future generations to admire, in a glass-fronted cabinet that is marked with a plaque announcing that it belongs to the "Ratel Platoon 1980 to 1984".

"Ratel," as Johan and Tiaan know very well, is the Afrikaans name for the honey badger, a small mammal found mainly in the Kalahari Desert that is known for its toughness and for its ferocity as a hunter. The standard infantry fighting vehicle of the South African Army, as they also know very well, is named after this formidable little fighter.

In the remaining few days of the week after the cadets return from the survival exercise the boys of the Ratel Platoon are too busy to concern themselves about the two newcomers in their midst much beyond brief smiles and hurried introductions and handshakes. But, when the rugby matches on Saturday afternoon are over and the boys are dismissed for the weekend, the Ratel platoon sergeant comes between the two of them as they head for the showers, puts his arms around their shoulders and says,

"Well played, both of you, you're a credit to the Under 14s."

"Thank you, boss," the two boys chorus.

"Um… it's not 'boss,' it's 'sergeant'," he corrects them.

"Sorry sergeant!"

"Right, well, when you two have finished in the showers I want you to report to the Great Hall in PT dress, you got that?"

"Yes, sergeant!"

"At 17h30 sharp, no later, no earlier, OK?"

"Yes, sergeant!"

An hour later, freshly showered and wearing PT dress, which consists only of a pair of olive green rugby shorts and nothing else, the two boys report to the Great Hall. There they find the rest of Ratel Platoon already waiting for them in a semi-circle, all of them shirtless and barefoot like Tiaan and Johan, wearing only their PT shorts. Only the cadet lieutenant and the cadet sergeant are more formally dressed in short-sleeved, open neck khaki shirts, khaki shorts, brown leather shoes and knee-length khaki socks.

"Right, you two, come stand here facing the platoon," orders the lieutenant, pointing to a spot in front of the semi-circle of boys.

Johan and Tiaan do as they are told. They notice that every boy is carrying what looks like a bamboo pole. It has a white leather handle with a disk-like hand guard separating the handle from the rest of the pole. It looks rather like a bamboo sword. Later the two boys will learn that that is precisely what it is. It is a bamboo shinai… a practice sword used in the sport of Japanese fencing known as Kendo ("the Way of the Sword") that all cadets are required to study and practice intensively.

"Cadets Johan de Beer and Tiaan Bekker," the lieutenant begins formally, "You are here to undergo the privilege of being initiated as members of the Ratel Platoon, should you so choose," announces the boy lieutenant.

"I say «should you so choose» because you have the right to refuse if you want to. However, you must understand that if you refuse the initiation you are choosing to go back to whatever school you came from," he explains further.

Johan and Tiaan look at each other briefly, 'Some choice!' they are both thinking, but they say at once, "We'll take the initiation."

At once the thirty strapping thirteen and fourteen year-olds of Ratel Platoon form a tunnel of two long lines facing each other down the length of the Great Hall. They space the lines by holding out their shinai at arms length so that the points touch. The space between each boy within the lines is measured the same way.

"Drop your rods (shorts)!" the cadet lieutenant orders and Johan and Tiaan comply at once in the habit of instant obedience so painfully acquired under the lash at the Boys Farm, quickly pushing their shorts down to their ankles and hopping out of them.

The two naked boys are positioned at the head of the tunnel, Tiaan immediately behind Johan. Tiaan is ordered to get up onto Johan's back, his arms over Johan's broad shoulders, his thick thighs cradled in Johan's muscular arms.

The lieutenant explains, "When I blow my whistle, Sergeant Preller will start marching slowly down the tunnel in front of you. You will follow him. You will remain three paces behind him. Each time he reaches a pair of cadets I will blow my whistle and he will pause. When he pauses, you will stand still while those cadets each deliver one stroke of the shinai across the back or the buttocks of the boy being carried. When you get to the end of the tunnel you will change places and return. You will do this twice. If you cry out at any point you fail the initiation right there and you're out!"

Johan and Tiaan both realize suddenly that this is going to be a much tougher ordeal than they thought. Whippings they are used to, but not to cry out is something else. At the quarry they were simply slaves. There was no question of behaving with courage or honour under the whip or the cane. Boys frequently sobbed, screamed and begged for mercy when they were being whipped back there. It was a kind of release and no one thought any the worse of them for doing it. But here at Nyati, they had noticed over the past few days, no boy ever cries out when being whipped or caned. He endures the pain stoically and silently, his eyes fixed sternly on some object, his face a mask, emitting at most a grunt or a hiss of indrawn breath at each stroke, only the tautness and the quivering of his muscles betraying the intensity of the pain in his back or his buttocks.

Johan waits behind Cadet Sergeant Preller. He can feel the tenseness in Tiaan's hard smooth body as it presses against his brawny back, warm and a little sweaty with fear. Tiaan's breath is hot against the back of Johan's thick muscled neck and his hard brown hands grip his wrists tightly in front of Johan's chest.

Johan can feel that, despite his fear, or perhaps because of it, Tiaan's large cock is beginning to swell where it lies pressed between Johan's lower back and his own belly. Johan's own impressive organ, which has already attracted admiring sidelong glances all down the tunnel of boys, begins to swell slowly in response. Johan is too absorbed in his own embarrassment to notice that most of the boys in the tunnel already have firmly erected cocks straining the fronts of their shorts in anticipation of the pleasure of inflicting pain upon the perfectly proportioned hard muscled specimens of young maleness before them.

The cadet lieutenant's whistle blows sharply. Cadet Sergeant Preller steps off in a slow march pace. After just a few paces, the whistle shrills again and the sergeant halts. Almost immediately there is a fluting of bamboo through the air and a loud meaty crack as it smacks against the bunched muscles of Tiaan's back. Johan feels Tiaan's whole body go instantly rigid with shock and pain. Tiaan arches his back and rises on Johan's arms, almost pushing them straight down with the thrust of his powerful thighs. At the same time Tiaan's arms tighten their grip, almost choking Johan as he stands struggling to hold his friend's body in check. A thick red weal rapidly stripes Tiaan's back, mushrooming in seconds into a double ridged purple welt. Then, gradually, Tiaan subsides and Johan feels Tiaan's heart pounding against his back, his chest heaving for air, his breath gusting hot and jerky against Johan's neck. He lets out a long hoarse sigh.

The moment that Tiaan's body relaxes, the second boy's shinai scythes through the air and burns another searing weal across Tiaan's back. Again Tiaan claws up Johan's back, panting breathlessly, his face twisted with pain, before the whistle blows and the cadet sergeant takes another few steps forward to halt again and the next pair of cadets slice across Tiaan's back with their bamboo swords.

Altogether fifteen pairs of muscular boys leave a latticework of thirty fiery welts across Tiaan's brawny brown back and his hard round buttocks by the time he reaches the end of the tunnel. Johan's cock is standing up thick and hard against the muscled ridges of his belly by now and Tiaan can't help a wry smile through his pain when gets off Johan's back and sees this.

Now it is Johan's turn to be whipped. His inordinately large erection subsides instantly with the pain of the first two strokes but half way through the first round it revives and Tiaan is conscious of its hardness against his back even through the additional agony that he has to suffer of Johan's hard body jerking, writhing and slamming against his freshly welted and still burning back.

The second round is even more excruciatingly painful and it takes every ounce of their courage, concentration and control to prevent themselves from crying out and failing the initiation.

Finally, the ordeal is over and the two naked boys stand at attention before their platoon, shaky but erect, and await further orders.

The cadet lieutenant steps up to them. He holds out his hand. "Congratulations, guys, you are now officially part of Ratel Platoon."

The other boys crowd around and congratulate their newest comrades.

"Just two more things," says the lieutenant as a couple of the cadets produce basins of water, razors and towels.

"First… you have to lose the hair." He points at their cocks and adds, "…all of it!"

The boys in Ratel Platoon all have their heads completely shaven and Johan and Tiaan have expected that they would have to follow suit. They had not reckoned on having to have their pubic hair shaven as well.

As if reading their thoughts, one of the cadets pulls down the front of his shorts to show them his completely hairless cock. They see that he is still fully erected. "Ratel Platoon goes hairless!" he says with a smile.

"Yeah, Ratels!" a couple of other boys call out, also pulling down their shorts momentarily to reveal hairless cocks in various stages of erection.

It is the work of just a couple of minutes to divest Johan and Tiaan of the sparse tufts of hair nestling above their cocks.

"Right, now the last thing…," says the lieutenant as an older man in overalls arrives with a small leather tool wrap. The boys have seen him around. He seems to be a kind of maintenance man.

"Tiffie here is going to tattoo the Ratel on your left arm… to show everyone where you belong."

Johan and Tiaan look at each other and grimace. They had noticed that all the boys in the Ratel Platoon have a tattoo of a ratel fighting a snake on their left upper arm but it had not dawned on them that they would have to have one too.

An hour later the tattooing is done and Johan and Tiaan are full-fledged members of the Ratel Platoon.

Much later, after lights out, they lie in bed putting the day through their thoughts. It is a hot night and they lie naked on top of their sheets. Their backs and their arses still feel like they are on fire so they lie on their bellies. But their spirits soar and they feel real happiness for the first time in a very long while.

They have had no opportunity for release since their flogging with the bamboo fencing swords and Johan's cock is stiff between his hard belly and the sheet. The tip of his cock is crying out for attention and he begins to move it slowly forward and back against the sheet. Soon he is humping the bed rhythmically, his head lifted and his back arched, buttocks clenching rapidly, eyes glazed, lips slack, mouth open and breath coming in jerks.

Suddenly Johan feels Tiaan clambering on top of him, using his knees to press Johan's legs apart, parting Johan's hard round butt cheeks with his palms and stretching Johan's hole with his strong thumbs. Roughly Tiaan noses the swollen tip of his big hard cock into the familiar hollow and thrusts it hard and deep into Johan's warm and welcoming channel.

Johan lifts his arse and pushes back to draw his friend's thick shaft as deeply into him as it can go. As Tiaan draws his cock back for another violent thrust, Johan thrusts his own cock forward against the sheet. With the ease of familiarity and long practice and without saying a word they quickly fall into a steady complementary rhythm of thrust and withdrawal, grunting and moaning their pleasure as they drive themselves to climax.

They climax almost at the same time and their whole beings seem fused together by the ecstasy that overwhelms them in that long and earth-juddering moment.

For a long while afterward they lie unmoving with Tiaan still inside Johan, neither of them wishing to sever this, the closest and most intimate union possible between two boys, and one that seems to complete them both.

Then at last Tiaan rolls off Johan and they lie together, their hard young bodies nestling warmly belly to back, as they drift off to deep and contented sleep.

Chapter 15

Nearly lunchtime, he thinks to himself as he moves among the naked sun-browned boys in his work gang. He glances over their brawny sweat-glistening backs, rising and falling, muscles bunching and writhing as they lift their sledge hammers and smash them down against the flinty rock.

Most of the young quarry boys wear faded and threadbare rugby shorts as their only clothing. They go barefoot to save the skinflint quarry owner money. And also because most South African boys are used to going barefoot anyway. They go shirtless because the quarry rule is 'bare backs for whipping'. In Spyker's gang, however, he makes his boys go completely naked. Spyker says his rule is 'bare backs and butts for whipping'.

Spyker stops and slaps his thick leather strap idly against the brown bulge of his muscular bare calf, his leathery bare toes stabbing at the loose gravel as he searches for any signs of slackness among his young slaves. Sensing his gaze, the boys suddenly put more effort into their labour, casting nervous sidelong glances at him as they swing their hammers harder and faster. They know their boss boy only too well. It's been half an hour since he last moved through them, strapping them vigorously across their bare backs, butts and thighs to spur them on to greater effort. It's about time now for another flurry of lashes and howls. Also, it's nearly lunchtime and Spyker likes to single out one or two of them for a sound flogging after lunch as a warning to the rest not to get lazy in the afternoon shift, when their bellies are full.

At fifteen, Spyker is only a year or two older than most of them and younger than several, but he is stronger and tougher than all of them and is utterly hard and ruthless. The boys of his work gang are terrified of him, and with good reason. He has been at the Boys Farm since he was 10 and, at the age of 11, he was the youngest boy ever to have been sent down to the quarry's slave pits. He was sent down because, even at that young age, he was regarded as an incorrigible delinquent and because he was exceptionally strong and tough for his age. In the four harsh years that he has slaved in this hot and stony hell, every last trace of softness or kindness has been brutally flogged, sweated and raped out of him.

Spyker moves slowly among his boys, pausing every now and then to lash some luckless boy with his heavy strap, and for the next twenty minutes the quarry echoes with the sound of leather cracking against naked flesh, the anguished yelps of his victims and the sudden frenzied thudding of hammers on rock.

The siren goes for lunchtime, but Spyker's boys know better than to stop working before he tells them to. He keeps them working for another fifteen minutes into the half hour lunchtime before finally dismissing them to go and wolf down their pap (cornmeal porridge) and stew and their milk at the food cart some 100 metres [300 feet] away.

When the siren goes again the boys sprint back to fall into their squad, their tough bare feet drumming against the hard earth and scattering the sharp gravel stones in a frantic rush not to be last.

Jan and Lukas, the thirteen year olds who always turn heads with their bright blue eyes, white-blond hair and rippling musculature, are not very fast, but they make it just ahead of two others… a brawny redhead and a compact boy with sandy hair, both fourteen years old and new to the gang, having arrived from Johannesburg just the evening before.

This is their first day in the quarry and they stand out from the longer serving convict boys in every way. Their every movement betrays awkwardness and embarrassment about their unaccustomed nakedness. Their skin, though tanned like most South African boys, is unused to the searing Bushveld sun and has turned a deep red-brown after just one morning. They mince along painfully on feet that, unlike most South African boys, are unused to going bare, their soles lacerated by the flinty gravel and leaving traces of blood on the stones. They still have the shocked and fearful wide-eyed look that all new boys to the quarry carry around with them for the first week or so. Though strongly built (or they would not have been sent down to the quarry) their muscularity comes from the leisurely pursuit of sport and gym. They do not yet have the lean muscled hardness, the whipcord bodies and the endurance that the other boys have acquired after months and years of brutal slave labour.

Spyker stops the two new boys before they join the squad. Jan lets out an audible sigh of relief. Thank God it's the new okes that's getting it and not me, he thinks to himself.

"Go stand there in front of the squad," he orders the two boys. Numbly, they obey him.

They stand in front of the squad, aware of the boys' sudden interest in them but not knowing why, embarrassedly hunching their bodies and trying to cover their genitalia with their cupped hands.

Spyker approaches them, swinging his strap from side to side through the air as if warming up. He points the handle at them.

"You two fucken cunts were late from lunch! You don't wanna work! You fucken bone lazy. You here to work! You not on a picnic with mommy and daddy now!"

The two boys look at him dumbly. They are so shocked they cannot even mouth a reply.

"Nothing to say, huh? Just as well! Fifteen lashes for each of you!" Spyker eventually spits out.

It now registers with the redhead that he is about to be whipped. He has never been beaten in his entire life and terror suddenly clutches at his throat.

"Please, no…" he manages to croak feebly, "Please… don't."

"Kneel in front of that concrete bollard Rooikop! (Redhead). Wrap your arms around it like you want to fuck it!

The redhead stands motionless in the grip of fear. Spyker gestures to a couple of boys in the squad and they quickly grab the redhaired boy and drag him over to the bollard. A swift kick to his calves and the boy drops to his knees. Holding his arms by the wrists they pull him forward against the bollard and keep him there. He struggles to get away but they are too strong for him.

Spyker winds himself up and delivers the first stroke across the boy's back with all his strength. The thick leather instantly traces a fiery stripe across his sun-reddened skin. For a split second it seems to have no effect at all. Then, suddenly, the pain bites into him. He throws back his head and roars a full-throated scream as his whole body jerks and thrashes against the bollard. The agony is something he could never have imagined. Then he suddenly drops his head and vomits his lunch over the top of the bollard.

Spyker waits for him to stop retching before whipping him the second stroke. Spyker wants to have the boy's full attention.

Most of the boys in the squad watch the red-haired boy with nothing more than a mild curiosity. Whippings are so commonplace that it is impossible for them to feel any compassion for his suffering at all. Floggings are an integral part of daily life in the quarry, almost reassuring in their frequency. In an hour or so it will be someone else's turn. For some of them it's just interesting to see how each new boy reacts to his first flogging. And this one better toughen up soon, "cause he's gonna get plenty more in the days that lie ahead! Lucky for him he's still in his week of grace, or he would get a taste of Hein's sambok this evening for his piss poor production.

Some of the boys, like Lukas and Jan, and especially Jan, watch with a much more intense interest. An interest that expresses itself in the familiar tingling between their legs and heightens, as the whipping proceeds, into the rapid swelling of their cocks.

Spyker warns the redhead to stop screaming like a baby, but he is past taking notice. So Spyker gives him five extra lashes for that.

When at last the whipping is over, the boy just wants to lie in the dirt and whimper, but Spyker's whip drives him up and back to his place in the squad, where he stands whimpering and feeling sorry for himself until Lukas clips him behind the head and hisses that he better shut up and grow up or Lukas will fuck him up himself.

The sandy haired boy is better prepared. He takes his position at the bollard without being forced and he endures his whipping rather better, although, by the tenth stroke he is moaning with pain and the two boys have to grab his wrists and pull him against the bollard to stop him trying to twist away from the strokes.

The whipping over, the sandy-haired boy quickly struggles to his feet and takes his place in the squad, his face twisted with pain and with the effort of trying to suppress his sobs.

"Right, back to work!" Spyker orders, "And no more fucken loafing around!"

As the other boys dash to grab their sledge hammers and shovels, Jan and Lukas hesitate momentarily, looking expectantly at Spyker. As always after these lunchtime floggings, Spyker is flushed and a little breathless and he has an enormous bulge in the front of his shorts. The boys wait because they know he will want to get his rocks off and half an hour of sex beats half an hour of breaking stones any day.

"Yes, get over here, you horny little buggers! You know what I want, what are you waiting for?"

Spyker yanks off his shorts as the two stocky blonde boys run forward to kneel in front of him, jostling each other and grabbing at Spyker's huge erection, each competing to be the first to get his lips around it.

"Hey, easy!" says Spyker, "You bite me you gonna shit! Take it in turn now!"

The boys take it in turns to suck in as much of Spyker's big cock as they can manage, working it expertly with their practiced lips and tongues until Spyker cans stand it no longer.

"Gimme your arse!" he pants to Jan.

Jan jumps up and bends over the bollard where the other two have just been whipped, planting his thick muscled legs wide apart and pushing up onto his stubby toes as he offers his hard round arse eagerly to Spyker. Spyker grips Jan's hips for purchase and rams himself deep into Jan's well used channel. Jan purrs with mixed pleasure and pain as Spyker fills him again and again, hard and fast.

Apart from a few envious sidelong glances, the rest of the slave boys ignore the impromptu sex show and get on with their work. Spyker can't get through a whole day without porking two or three boys and everyone is used to it. All except the two new boys, who have never witnessed anything like this in their lives. They stop and stare in open-mouthed amazement, the burning pain in their backs and arses briefly forgotten.

They watch as Spyker pumps his inordinately long thick cock into Jan's arse with the smooth rapidity of a well oiled piston, his thighs slamming into the hard muscled roundness of Jan's buttocks with a force that sprays droplets of sweat from Jan's face onto his straining arms and the bollard in front of him.

As they watch, strange and unfamiliar feelings begin to stir deep inside them. They feel their hearts pumping a little faster and the blood starts to course hotter through their veins. A sense of primordial excitement seems to swell in their breasts. Their mouths feel dry and they feel stirrings in their groin. To their utter shame and embarrassment, their cocks seem to have acquired a life of their own. They swell and lengthen unbidden, their tips tingling pleasurably as they grow and harden. Eventually their young cocks stand up stiff and pulsing, resisting their efforts both to will them into slackness and to hide them behind their hands.

Finally, Spyker climaxes and Jan feels his thick cock jerking in swelling spasms deep inside him as he shoots great wads of hot cum into Jan. Spyker stays inside Jan until the last ecstatic shudder has passed and then withdraws, his still swollen cock making an audible wet sucking sound as it plops out.

Jan stands upright and turns to Spyker, his cock standing straight up and bobbing against the ridged muscles of his hard brown belly.

"Please, boss, can we cum too? My cock feels like it's gonna explode!"

"Ja, sure," says Spyker, feeling generous in the warm afterglow of climax.

Then he spots the two new boys still standing and staring at them, ineffectually trying to force down their unruly erections.

"No, wait," he says to Jan and Lukas, who have just started jerking themselves off, "I got a better idea!"

"Get your arses over here, you two!" he yells at the two new boys.

They scurry over, their hearts in their mouths.

"Who the fuck said you two could take a rest and enjoy the show instead of working?"

The two boys look at him dumbly.

"Do you want another whipping so soon?"

They shake their heads frantically.

"Looks like you enjoyed the show, though!"

They blush deeply and hang their heads, trying once again to cover their rampant penises.

"Get your hands away!"

They obey.

"Well, seeing you took time to enjoy yourselves while the others were working, it's only right you give the others a show now."

They look at him, puzzled.

By now all the other boys in the work gang are watching what is going on and Spyker calls them to drop their tools and fall in to watch the show. Any diversion from the grinding labour is like a holiday and the boys hasten to obey.

Spyker explains.

"These two okes had a good time watching Jan get fucked in the arse while you guys was working, so now it's only fair they get their arses fucked while you guys watch!"

Spyker details four boys to hold each of the new boys down over a bollard, their arms stretched in front of them and their legs spread wide apart, stretching the cleft between their buttocks to expose the tightly clenched pink pucker of their virgin arseholes.

Jan and Lukas start spitting in their hands to lubricate their dicks, but Spyker stops them.

"No, they're not s'posed to enjoy it! You're hard enough… give it to "em dry!"

The two blonde boys grimace… "giving it to 'em dry' is not that much fun for them either … to begin with, anyway… but they know better than to argue.

Jan moves in between the red-haired boy's brawny outspread thighs. He pushes the swollen purple bulb at the tip of his cock against the trembling boy's pucker, bobbing against it insistently, like a landlord demanding entry. The boy's arsehole clenches even tighter. Jan withdraws slightly and tries to insert a finger into the boy's hole. The boy's virgin sphincter remains resolutely shut. Jan reaches around under the boy and slides his hand down his belly to feel if he still has an erection. He finds the boy's cock pressed up stiff and hard against his belly and smiles. He grips the cock and slides his hand up and down its shaft to try to relax the boy. He massages the boy's sphincter with the thumb of his free hand. He tries to push his thumb in. No luck.

Only one thing for it, Jan thinks. He readies his cock against the boy's hole, leans over his back and grips the boy's shoulders firmly in his powerful spade-like hands. Jan arches his back… like coiling a spring… and then thrusts his cock against the unyielding opening with all his strength. The boy groans with pain but entry still eludes Jan. Jan thrusts again … and again… and at the fourth attempt, finally, resistance crumbles and Jan's battering ram forces an excruciating entry.

The red-haired boy screams long and hard at the agony that feels like it's splitting his body in two. His erection subsides instantly. A moment later the sandy-haired boy's screams signal that Lukas has gained entry there too.

For the next ten minutes the new boys' screams ricochet off the quarry walls and they writhe and struggle as their two younger tormentors roger them relentlessly, slowly and deliberately at first, but gradually increasing in pace and force as they drive themselves to climax. Then, quite suddenly, Jan senses that the red-haired boy has fallen silent, except for a low moaning, and is not resisting him any more. Soon after, the other boy is also quiet. After a while it seems to Jan that his boy is actually responding to his thrusts with little movements. He slides a hand round to the boy's front and down his belly again. He finds the boy's cock rock hard once more. Hey, he's enjoying this, Jan thinks to himself with delight.

A split second before reaching climax Jan pulls out his thick and throbbing cock and pumps it frantically along its whole length as it spurts slippery ropes of hot cum over the red-haired boy's back and buttocks. Moments later, Lukas does the same, followed in seconds by nearly all the boys in the gang, jetting cum all over themselves or the boys in front of them.

When the freshly fucked boys are finally released, both of them stand with their cocks quiveringly erect. This time they don't bother trying to cover them but stand with their hands at their sides. Jan and Lukas look enquiringly at Spyker and he nods at them. They drop at once in front of the two new boys and take their cocks into their wide mouths. The two new boys don't even try to pull away and in minutes Jan and Lukas have them moaning and whimpering as their tongues propel the boys to the most intoxicating rush of pleasure they have ever felt in their short lives.

The two new boys look slightly comical as they waddle stiff-legged back to work, but their spirits feel strangely lifted and for the first time since they arrived their eyes have a gleam in them.

Jan slaps the red-haired boy's arse playfully as he passes, "Hey… first time it hurts like hell… but you get used to it! Well, you better or you gonna have a real shit time here!"

The boy looks at Jan desperately, "Geez, are you serious? I'll never get used to that!"

Jan laughs. "I promise you, my mate, you gonna get used to it if you like it or not! Tell you what, you bring your mate to Lukas and me after lights out tonight and we'll give you a hand with that."

"No thanks, I think I'll pass tonight."

Jan whirls back and jabs a hard strong finger against the boy's chest, his bright blue eyes flashing.

"Hey, I wasn't asking, pal, I'm telling you! You the new meat here! Your arses b'long to me and Lukas now. You come to my bed after lights out! I have to look for you, you gonna be sorry!"

The red-head steps backward, startled, and fear flits briefly across his face. But Jan notices the instant hardening of the boy's dick and how, though his cheeks flush with anger, his eyes drop in a subconscious signal of submission. Jan swivels on a hard bare heel and moves on without a backward glance, almost swaggering in the confidence of his mastery over the older boy. He knows that the other boy will come to him tonight. He knows, too, that it will not be from fear alone but because he wants to. Jan's cock swells in anticipation.

The red-head watches Jan saunter ahead with mixed feelings of anger, humiliation and excitement. Angry and humiliated by his own capitulation to the younger boy's aggressive assertion of ownership over what he has always regarded as intimately his own… his body. Yet excited by that same assertion, by the sheer maleness, roughness and strength of Jan's hard muscled young body and by the compulsion of his sexuality. He remembers the exquisite pressure of that wide mouth and assertive tongue around the tip of his cock, driving him to unexplored heights of ecstasy. He watches, mesmerized, the tantalizing movements of those hard round buttocks, and of those dancing ropes of muscle in Jan's brawny brown back, his thick thighs and his bulging calves as he strides ahead. He feels the sweet tightening in his groin and the swelling pleasure in his thickening and lengthening cock.

And suddenly he knows, not only that he will submit to Jan again, but that he wants to.

As Spyker drives the boys to exhaustion through the rest of the afternoon to catch up the lost production, no one notices the quarry owner's bakkie (pick-up truck) grinding down the gravel road to the quarry camp, followed by a green Landrover. They don't see the straight-backed grey-haired gentleman that alights with a khaki-uniformed man from the one, or the dark suited man that alights together with the quarry owner, Mr Basson, from the other.

Chapter 16

Mr Basson breezily ushers the general and his adjutant into a dusty office.

"Please make yourself comfortable, General. I need to speak to Mr Walters here about a few things and I then we will join you. Will you have some coffee or tea perhaps?"

General Van Dyk shakes his head curtly.

"Well then… we'll be with you shortly."

When Mr Basson has left Captain Stander turns to the general.

"I can't believe he's going to get away with it, Sir!" he fumes, "He's running an out-and-out slave camp here! These young boys are being ruined! He's supposed to educating them… they will never be fit for anything but prison or manual labour for the rest of their lives!"

"I know… but look at the positive side… at least we got Johan de Beer and Tiaan Bekker formally released and we get to choose another two… not much, but it's something."

The young captain bangs a fist on the table

"It just feels so shameful to be compromising on what we set out to do!"

"I know, I know," says the general, "I don't like it either, but we have to pick our battles, James, and this one we can't win. We can't jeopardize what we are doing at Inyati to save all these boys. Basson is much better connected than I thought he was. I suppose I should have realised that no one can do what he has been doing here for so long, and get away with it, without high connections in government."

The door opens at that moment and Mr Basson comes in with his lawyer.

"Well, gentlemen, the boys are on their way back from the quarry now. There will be some punishments that you are welcome to witness and then the boys will be dismissed to go shower and have their supper. After that, you are welcome to start interviewing the boys and make your choices."

As he speaks they can hear the rhythmic thudding of hard bare feet on hard bare ground in the distance, growing steadily louder as the squads of weary quarry boys approach the camp. It has a familiar sound to it and the general realizes that the boys at Nyati make a similar sound as they come in from their field exercises. Similar… but not the same. He realizes suddenly that the difference is in the spirit. The Nyati boys are under just as harsh a discipline as these boys, but theirs is the discipline of the warrior, instilled by pride and sustained by honour. They submit to it because they choose to. These boys are slaves and their discipline is the mindless obedience of the slave, instilled by the lash and sustained by fear and pain.

The two soldiers watch as the convict boys form squads on the gravel square. As they move around the edge of the squads they grudgingly admit to themselves that, underneath the sweat and filth the boys are in superb physical condition, whatever other damage they may have sustained. They are obviously well-nourished… you can always trust a farmer to feed his working animals well. Nearly every boy is superbly muscled, his body lean and hard, with not an ounce of flab to soften the chiseled lines of his musculature. All of them are shirtless and barefoot. Most wear faded rugby shorts in various stages of disintegration. Some are naked. The general notices that in one squad all the boys are naked.

On the far side, next to a thick wooden post, they spot the sturdy blonde boy who was previously introduced to them as Hein, Mr Basson's fourteen year old son. Like any South African farm boy, Hein is normally barefoot and shirtless like his young convict slaves. But today, presumably in honour of the general's presence, he is dressed in a clean khaki shirt and pair of shorts and he has taken the trouble to rinse the dust off his tough bare feet under a tap.

After consulting briefly with one of the supervisors Hein calls out a list of names and five ashen faced boys detach themselves one by one from their squads all over the assembly area and run to the front. They line up at the wooden post, one behind the other in the order that they were called.

Hein turns to the first boy in the line, a muscle bulging fourteen year-old with brown hair and green eyes. His thickly callused hands and feet are big, broad and squared off like spades. Hanging from the waistband stretched tightly around the slim waist are the tattered remains of faded green rugby shorts that are obviously too small for him. The hard round bulges of his buttocks protrude from the shreds, tanned the same deep mahogany brown as the rest of his hairless and well-muscled body. At Hein's signal the boy steps up to the wooden post, faces it, and stretches his arms against the pole above his head. The supervisor immediately loops a length of rope around each wrist, pushes the ropes through the steel rings at the top of the post and pulls them down hard, leaning back on the ropes, stretching the boy up the length of the post and pulling him up onto his leathery toes.

Hein steps back and reaches far behind him with his black rhino hide sambok. A split second pause and the sambok darts through the air like a striking mamba, making an audible fluting sound before it snaps against the bunched muscles of the boy's back with a crack that echoes off the walls of the huts. The boy's body slams against the post and he loses his toehold momentarily as a livid welt mushrooms instantly across his muscular brown back. A strangled sob wells up out of his throat as the fiery pain explodes through his body.

When the boy stops thrashing against the post Hein takes up position again. The boy hears the movement behind him and tenses in anticipation of the next stroke, whimpering softly, the back of his mouth bitter with the bile of fear and the hard-knotted muscles of his back and buttocks quivering uncontrollably.

Again the sambok arcs through the warm afternoon air and cracks against the boy's arched back. His back feels like it has been stroked with a red-hot poker. He grits his teeth in an effort to strangle the scream that comes from deep inside him. The veins in his thick neck stand out and his head feels like it wants to explode. He cannot contain the scream and it bursts from his throat like the baying of a wounded buffalo.

Three more times the sambok scythes into the boy's back as he screams and writhes against the whipping post. When at last he is released he takes position at the back of the row of boys under punishment, his head bowed and his muscular arms hugging himself tightly as he bobs up and down and sobs and moans unashamedly. Five fresh and livid welts stripe his back horizontally, oozing droplets of bright red blood and overlaying many older brown and purple weals.

Watching boys being flogged is not a new experience for the general and his adjutant. The boys at the Nyati Agoge are frequently whipped just as severely. The difference is that the Nyati boys take their whippings in stoic silence, it being a matter of great shame for them to cry out. The quarry boys, on the other hand, being no more than slaves, are not motivated by any such considerations. No one expects them to behave with honour and so they do not.

The general's attention is then drawn like a magnet to the two naked thirteen year old boys who are next in the line and he almost holds his breath at their sheer physical beauty. With their blond crew cuts, bright blue eyes sparkling with mischief, wide full lips set in broad Nordic faces, exceptional muscularity and smooth skin tanned a deep honey brown, they make bellies lurch and pulses race wherever they go.

The boys are Jan and Lukas. Their sexual fun with Spyker and the two new boys this afternoon cost them in lost production and now they have to pay for it. Hein is going to take it out of their skins with his sambok. What the hell, they think, it's only five lashes… it was worth it!

During the first boy's flogging, Jan's cock stiffens into a quivering hard erection, as usual, and he spends the time playing with it absently, pushing it down to the horizontal and then letting it go so that it whips up and slaps against the muscled ridges of his hard brown belly. As Lukas presses up behind him in the line Jan can feel Lukas's own inordinately large erection rubbing up against him and he pushes his arse back against it.

When it is Jan's turn to step up to the whipping post his cock is still rock hard and by now dribbling a little pre-cum. As the supervisor stretches him up Jan plants his toes on either side of the post and grips the post with his thighs so that his cock presses up against the rough wood. Almost at once he starts pumping his cock between the post and his belly, gasping and grunting with the effort and the intense pleasure radiating in waves from the pulsating tip of his cock through his body.

Each successive stroke of the sambok across the tortured muscles of Jan's brawny brown back tears a strangled scream from his throat and sends surges of searing pain chasing through him. But the rushes of pain seem to intensify the waves of sexual pleasure until the final excruciating stroke of the rhino hide propels him to a tsunami of ecstasy.

Hot thick geysers of cum spurt up between the whipping post and his belly as far as his chest. When Jan is released from the ropes and stands back from the post long thin strands of sticky grey cum, like spider webs, run from his belly to the post. As he staggers back to his place in the line, thick globs of cum are still running down his legs and dropping off the tip of his long, still erected cock, as it waggles ponderously from side to side.

Lukas, whose surreptitious fingering of the tingling tip of his cock has gradually escalated into a rapid fisting, reaches climax at the same time that Jan does. Slippery ropes of hot cum jet from the pulsing tip of his cock and describe a silver arc through the air before splattering into the dust and on Hein's calves and feet. Hein looks at Lukas in disgust as Lukas steps almost jauntily up to the whipping post.

Lukas gets five extra strokes for cumming on Hein and for the next half hour the compound echoes with the vicious snapping of rhino hide against hard muscle and the screams and sobs of the remaining three boys being whipped.

Within fifteen minutes of being dismissed, however, the general notes with a wry smile, the same boys who had staggered away from the whipping post, bent double, howling and sobbing as if mortally wounded, are scampering off to the showers and rough housing with their friends like rambunctious puppies, as if nothing had happened.

Mr Basson and his lawyer find the general and the captain looking at the whipping post.

"Well, General, as you can see, we run a tight ship here… I'm sure you appreciate that it is necessary when you have to control a large number of delinquents such as these. Fear and pain are the only things that keep these young animals tame and obedient and the whip is the only thing that gives "em both at the same time."

"And what about the education and rehabilitation programs that your brochure talks about?" asks Captain Stander

"Ah, yes… that's for the boys up at the farm program. These boys here are beyond help. They've all been found by the psychologist to be habitually delinquent… I can show you the reports… only thing is to keep them in a facility where they can't harm society until they're old enough to go to jail or be paroled. Until then… we give them a chance to work here and make a useful contribution to society."

"To your pocket, you mean!" Captain Stander retorts.

"No need to be unpleasant, Captain! Running a correctional facility costs money. These boys help to cover the cost of doing something for the other boys up at the farm who are worth saving."

"Yes, well, anyway," interrupts General Van Dyk, "I think I have made up my mind which two boys we will be taking in terms of our agreement."

Mr Basson looks at the general enquiringly.

"I'll take the twins… the two blonde boys who were whipped just now."

"Oh… those two… are you sure? You haven't even interviewed them. And they're not twins by the way, just very close friends who look like they could be brothers."

"I will interview them when I come back tomorrow, just to be sure, but there's something about them that makes want to take them out of here."

"Well… it's no skin off my nose, but you saw what they got up to! They are both completely sexually depraved. That's why I sent them down to the quarry in the first place. These quarry boys are all into sex in a big way… but those two are in a league of their own!"

"They look healthy enough to me. They're obviously pretty tough. If they have a mind left I can make something of them. As for the sex… well… boys will be boys and if you have no sport or games for them they will always make their own!"

It is just before lights out and Jan and Lukas are sitting on the edges of their beds, talking quietly with each other, when they become aware of two boys standing at the foot of their beds. Jan looks up quizzically sees the two new fourteen year-olds that he and Lukas fucked down at the workings this afternoon.

"You said we must come to you," says the redhead.

"Oh ja, I forgot," says Jan and to Lukas , "I told "em you "n me's gonna teach them to like boy sex!"

"Reckon they like it already!" laughs Lukas, pointing to the tented fronts of their shorts.

"Ja, check that!" sniggers Jan, as the new boys blush.

"What's your names," asks Lukas.

"I'm Tom," says the redhead, "'n he's Scott."

"OK," says Jan

"Hey, what you wearing shorts for, anyway?" asks Lukas

"Ja, get them off… you're embarrassing us," says Jan, "In Spyker's gang we go kaalgat (naked). Don't let me catch you with clothes on again!"

The new boys hastily peel off their shorts and drop them on Jan's bed.

"That's better," says Jan, gripping Scott's stiffening dick in his hard fist and milking it slowly for a while. Jan likes how quickly the older boy's dick responds.

"I'll do this one first," says Jan to Lukas, "Seeing as how I did the rooikop (redhead) already today."

Jan swings his feet onto his bed and lies back.

"OK, Scott, you can start by licking the soles of my feet. Then you gonna suck each one of my toes and then you gonna lick me all the way up to my balls. When you get there I'll tell you what next."

"Ah no, that's gonna take too long for me," says Lukas to Tom, "You get up here and just start with licking and sucking my balls!"

Scott looks at the rough, brown, thickly callused skin on Jan's soles with distaste.

"I ain't gonna lick that!" he says

"Why not?" asks Jan

"They're dirty!"

"They're not dirty… I just showered!"

"Well I'm not gonna lick your feet… or suck your toes!"

"You sure?" says Jan, swinging his feet to the floor and standing up.

"I'm sure," says Scott, folding his arms and looking defiant.

Jan turns to the rest of the hut

"Hey guys! My new bumboy thinks he can call the shots. Come help me put his mind right!"

Scott looks a little uncertain of himself now.

"Don't wanna change your mind?," asks Jan

"No," says Scott, a little hesitantly

Four boys grab Scott and throw him face down over the end of Jan's bed, arms stretched above his head and his legs spread apart, toes on the floor. Each boy grabs an arm or a leg and they hold Scott immobile in this position. The rest of the boys in the hut line up eagerly down the aisle between the two rows of beds, rapidly pumping their cocks hard in anticipation of the fun.

Just then Spyker enters the hut. He sees at once what is going on and he moves up to the head of the line.

The boys look at their unpredictable boss boy apprehensively, not sure what he will do.

Spyker looks down at the spread-eagled Scott for a moment. He remembers his own terrifying introduction to the hard sex of the quarry boys when he was sent down as an eleven year old four years ago. He had also been raped by all the boys in the gang for refusing to be compliant. He could hardly walk for a week afterward. It is the standard punishment for non-conformity meted out by the boys among themselves. No point in stopping it. They will just wait until he has gone back to his own quarters. Anyway, the quicker these new boys learn to fit in the better it is for Spyker. He doesn't need boys with their own ideas in his gang.

Spyker yanks off his shorts and tosses them to the first boy in the line to hold.

"I get first go!" he says.

Then, pointing to his limp cock, he says to Jan, "Make it hard."

Jan drops to his knees and takes Spyker's enormous cock into his wide mouth, working it rapidly to a rock hard erection with the energetic and imaginative ministrations of his strong young tongue and elastic lips.

When Spyker feels he is close to ejaculation he withdraws his giant pole suddenly from Jan's mouth and presses its swollen head against Scott's anus, still tender and red from the rogering that Lukas gave him this afternoon. Spyker arches his back as he lies over Scott. He takes a firm grip of Scott's shoulders and then rams his cock hard and deep into Scott, smashing all resistance with the sheer strength of that one brutal thrust.

Scott gurgles during the first two violent thrusts of Spyker's battering ram, the breath driven from his lungs by the force of the penetration so that he is unable to scream out the excruciating pain. Then, gasping and spluttering under the onslaught, he gets his breath back and his bellowing bounces off the walls.

The redhead, Tom, is white-faced with shock and fear. No one else bats an eyelid. The boys who have been there longer watch Spyker's vigorous thrustings with interest and call out "Go! Go! Go!" as they wait eagerly for their turn. They have seen it all before, many times. Most of them have been through it themselves at one time or another, and they know that the screaming and sobbing will stop at some point and that the pain will morph into pleasure.

The moment Spyker is finished the next boy takes his place and so the rogering goes on until all 20 or so boys in the hut have had a turn. Mercifully for Scott, half the boys are so wound up by the time they get to him that they come very quickly after they enter him. They make Tom have a go, but he is so excited and inexperienced that he comes over his friend's arse and back before he even gains entry. Jan makes him enter and have a few thrusts anyway, "Just for practice."

Even before Spyker had finished, Scott's screams had subsided into low moans and grunts of pleasure. Jan also notices no less than three times that, even as some boy is grinding away at Scott's arse, Scott's own pelvis is thrusting away against the mattress of its own volition. And when Scott is finally allowed to stand up, Jan notices with delight that his belly and chest is covered with smears and globs of cum. He is less delighted when he sees that his mattress is also covered in the slithery goo. Ah well, he thinks, at least he's got some spunk.

"Now," says Jan, as he lies back on his bed with his hands behind his head, "Are you gonna come suck my toes?"

Scott climbs wordlessly onto Jan's bed and straddles Jan's belly, facing toward Jan's feet. He bends down and takes a big toe in his warm moist mouth. Slowly and gently he sucks it for a while before moving onto the next toe, working the spaces in between with his tongue.

"Wow, that feels great!" croons Jan, his dick hardening almost instantly.

Chapter 17

Captain Stander, the General's adjutant, steals a glance in the rearview mirror at the bristled blonde heads of the two young boys behind him. Jan and Lukas press up against each other on the same side of the back seat, as if for security, and lean forward with their chins on their forearms against the back of the driver's seat, breathing their hot breath against the Captain's neck and staring in mixed anxiety and wonder at the immaculate lawns and gardens sweeping past them. Their bright blue eyes look a little troubled in their broad sun-browned faces and Lukas chews his lower lip nervously.

Then Jan catches the captain's eye in the mirror and his wide mouth stretches at once in an irresistibly charming grin that lights up his face and puts a sparkle in his eyes. The Captain grins back, his belly lurching mildly under the boy's spell. Jan grins at Lukas and Lukas brightens up too.

It has been a long hot drive and it feels like an eternity since they left the Boys' Farm quarry this morning. The two boys are still dazed by the events that swept them up this morning like leaves in a whirlwind and dropped them in the care of these two strangers.

Spyker, the boss-boy of their work gang, woke his charges this morning in his usual explosive fashion, yelling, tipping them out of their mattresses and flailing their naked bodies with his leather strap as they yelped and scrabbled frantically to get away.

Jan was in a deep sleep, exhausted after spending most of the night initiating the new boy, Scott, into the rough pleasures of quarry boy sex. Scott, like most of the boys who come to the Boys' Farm, was both a virgin and an innocent when he arrived at the quarry. But his rough introduction yesterday, first by Lukas at the workings and then last night by all the boys in the hut, had awoken in him a lust for hard sex that was insatiable. And Jan, equally insatiable and with limitless stamina and strength, was delighted to oblige. Both Jan and Scott lay dead to the world in each others' arms in a state of happy oblivion… completely unaware of Spyker's noisy arrival until Spyker bundled both of them onto the floor.

Spyker looked at the startled pair with distaste.

"Fuck! Look what you look like!" he said to Jan, "You're covered in cum and blood and… what's that? It looks like shit!"

"It's just dirt mixed with sweat… we went on the floor a few times," offered Jan.

"Well, you stink… both of you!"

"What's the big deal!" protested the puzzled Jan, "We're always dirty after sex… which means every morning! You know we're not 'lowed to shower after lights out… Not like when we go with you and we can use the boss-boys' bathroom. What's the problem all of a sudden?"

"Cause you and Lukas have to see those ooms (uncles) who were here last night – and Hein said to make sure you're clean and respectable!"

"What for?"

"I dunno. When Hein says "Jump!" I don't even ask how high! Unlike you, I don't enjoy getting my back or my arse sambokked by that laaitie (young boy). So you better go get yourself cleaned up."

Lukas and the other new boy, Tom, had also gotten up by now.

"Who are those ooms?," asked Lukas

"I dunno. Look like cops to me. Maybe Old Man Basson reported you for being sex perverts and they gonna take you to the district surgeon to have your balls cut off!"

Jan and Lukas cupped their hands over their balls and looked at each other anxiously.

"C'mon, get going!" yelled Spyker, as he flicked his strap at their hands.

Thirty minutes later Jan and Lukas were freshly soaped and showered and wearing the only clothing they possess, a pair of faded navy blue rugby shorts that are a little on the tight side, having been issued to the growing boys nearly a year before. Being accustomed to go about completely naked all the time, they find wearing shorts more than a little irksome.

The last t-shirts they were issued with have long since been traded for smokes, sweets or other contraband with old Andries, the black tractor driver, or torn up and used for cleaning cloths, bandages or poeslappe (a South African prison and reformatory expression meaning, literally, cunt-wipes, used for wiping up the messy detritus of sex in the absence of ready access to bathrooms and showers). The quarry boys all go shirtless all of the time and have no use for T-shirts as articles of clothing.

They ate an ample breakfast of pap en vleis (stodgy maize meal porridge and minced meat with vegetables) and gorged themselves on mugs full of thick farm milk… starch for energy and protein to build muscle fibre. Being a farmer, Old Man Basson knows the value of a proper diet for his draft animals and he reasons that it makes business sense to provide his boy slaves with nothing less.

Jan and Lukas watched the boys assemble in their work gangs, heave their spades, picks and hammers onto their brawny brown shoulders and jog off to the quarry, their muscles rippling and their hard bare feet thudding in familiar rhythm against the compacted earth of the dirt road. They did not know that they would not see any of them again.

They sniggered and elbowed each other as they watched the two new boys, Scott and Tom, try to keep up with their comrades, hobbling along stiffly wide-legged on blistered, lacerated feet and feeling like they have red hot pokers shoved up their raw arses.

"We sure blistered their bums last night," snorted Lukas.

"Ja, for sure… they gonna cry when we fuck them tonight!"

"Ag shame! I think we should give them a break!"

"Nah, that Scott loves it! He couldn't get enough of my dick last night. He was bleeding even, an' he still wanted more!"

"Still…"

"An' even if they don't want it, they gotta learn it isn't up to them… their arses b'long to us… they gotta do what we want!"

"I s'pose…"

"Suppose nothing! You know if the guys here think we gone soft, soon our arses'll b'long to anyone what wants them. Bad enough we b'long to Spyker."

"Ja… I know… you're right"

While they waited for the General, Jan and Lukas watched the three naked boys who had been caged in the hok overnight for punishment get their breakfast canings from Spyker… twenty searing strokes across the quivering buttocks for each boy that had the compound echoing with their screams for fully half an hour. These breakfast whippings never failed to arouse Jan and this morning was no different, despite his anxiety about meeting the ooms and the fact that he had spent most of the night in frenetic sex with Scott. Lukas was not far behind and both boys had rock hard erections bulging out of the top of their waistbands before the General's landrover arrived.

Spyker chased them both to the shower block with the instruction to "Go wank those off under the shower you fucking perverts and if you cream your shorts before you get there you're dead!"

The boys quickly yanked off their shorts to be sure and raced naked to the shower, their smooth golden brown legs flashing and their tough bare feet crunching heedless over the hot sharp gravel stones. As they ran, they pretended to be helicopters, whirling their shorts above their heads with one hand and manipulating their inordinately long hard cocks with their other hands like helicopter control sticks.

Spyker watched them go, laughing at their antics.

A short while later he went to check on them. The sight of the sturdy blonde thirteen year olds urgently pumping their exceptional erections to climax under the streaming water, toes curled, tongues sticking out and muscles rippling under their smooth wet skin brought Spyker to instant erection. Unable to contain his excitement he made Jan bend over and hold onto the shower tap while he rogered Jan's eager arse violently with his enormous cock. No sooner had he shot his wad deep inside Jan when he pulled out his still swollen and still dribbling penis and just about dived into Lukas, who was already bent over, his muscled legs spread wide apart and riding up onto his leathery bare toes in delighted anticipation of being fucked hard by his fifteen year old master.

By the time the young convict boss-boy and his two younger boy slaves emerged from the shower block the General had arrived and was waiting at the office to interview Jan and Lukas.

The crackle of rifle fire suddenly grabs the boys' attention and they slide quickly across to the opposite side of the landrover to see where the sound is coming from. On that side of the road they see a broad cleared space in the bush, stretching to a red earth wall about five hundred metres [550 yards] away. Along the top of the earth wall is a line of ten yellow boards with black numbers painted on them. At the foot of the wall, in line with each number, ten rectangular target frames seem to be hiding behind a low earth mound.

At the two hundred metre [220 yards] distance from the targets ten boys lie prone on the ground, rifles aimed at the targets. Another line of boys stands behind them, waiting their turn in disciplined patience. They stand at ease in their khaki shirts and shorts, their bare heels planted 30 centimetres [12 inches] apart, left arm to the rear with the fist centred on the buttocks, the right hand holding the barrel of the rifle and the butt resting on top of the right foot to keep it out of the dust.

Just then the line of targets seem to pop out of the ground in a line and there is a sustained crackling, like the sound of a veld fire racing through dry bush, as the cadets deliver a sustained volume of rapid fire at their targets. Moments later the targets drop into the ground again and the firing stops.

Jan and Lukas look excitedly at the two officers. "Jis, dis kwaai! (Jeez, that's cool!)," says Jan, "Will we also get to shoot like that?"

The General smiles at them, "You'll do so much of that you'll get sick of it, I expect!"

He motions with his head to his adjutant and the young captain swings the landrover onto a track that runs along the side of the range to where the cadets are shooting.

Before the landrover has even stopped the rambunctious pair have bailed out and are running to the firing point as fast as their sturdy legs can take them, heedless of the Captain's yells of "Hey, wait, you can't go there!"

They run straight into the burly musketry instructor, who wraps a trunk-like arm around each one's waist and lifts them onto his shoulders like two sacks of potatoes, their bare legs and arms flailing.

"Whoa! Whoa!" he calls, you can't just run onto the firing point like that!" he calls out as he puts them down again and puts a ham-like restraining hand against each boy's forehead.

The instructor salutes as the General walks up.

"Good afternoon, Sir. I take it these are the two new boys you called about."

"Yes, Frans, they are."

"I heard you call them to stop, Sir, but they just kept running. Do you want me to apply a little discipline to their backsides?"

"I think just have a chat to them this time about the Spartan rule of obedience that we follow here and warn them what will happen the next time they disobey.

"Roger, Sir, will do!"

"Well, then, I'll leave them with you for the rest of the afternoon. They will be joining this platoon as first year cadets. They already know two of the cadets in Ratel Platoon – De Beer and Bekker. You can take care of all the administration and logistics when you get back to the barracks later."

"Very good, Sir, will do!"

With that the General turns on his heel and leaves with Captain Stander.

The musketry sergeant fetches a long yellow rottang (rattan cane) and a short braided leather horsewhip from his own landrover. He shows them to Jan and Lukas.

"You see these?" he asks.

The boys look apprehensive.

The sergeant laughs. "Don't worry, I'm not going to jack you now – I just want to introduce you to my helpers. They help me to teach you boys how to become good little Spartans. You boys are gonna get to know them really well in the weeks and months that lie ahead. There's lots of rules that you have to learn here at Nyati, but they all boil down to one important rule – obey every order instantly and absolutely. By 'absolutely' I mean do it with a smile like you love it. The slightest hesitation, the slightest sign of unwillingness… if it just looks like you're thinking about it… you gonna get one of these across either your arse or your back. Understand?"

"Yes boss!" the boys chorus.

"That's 'sergeant', not 'boss'­, OK?"

"Yes sergeant!"

Jan and Lukas have not long to wait before they see the sergeant's words brought to life.

One of the cadets lying on the firing point has a misfire. Instead of putting his arm up for help, he stands up and walks back to the sergeant with his rifle, the misfired round still in the chamber.

The sergeant immediately grabs the rifle away from the boy, walks back to the firing point and clears the round. Then he returns to the boy and dresses him down for not doing as he had been told. The boy silently endures the tirade, standing at ease and looking the sergeant in the eye the whole while as he has been trained to do.

Finally, the sergeant runs out of steam and glares at the boy in silence for a moment.

"Well?," the sergeant demands, eventually, "What are you waiting for?"

"Sergeant!" the boy comes to attention, swivels on his bare heel and doubles off to the sergeant's landrover, returning a moment later with the sergeant's long yellow rottang. He hands it to the sergeant without a word and then quickly strips off his khaki shirt and shorts, placing them neatly folded on the grass at his feet. Without waiting for an instruction he plants his sturdy legs apart and bends over in the classic schoolboy caning stance, clamping a strong hand firmly around each leg just above the ankle. He lifts his head to the horizontal and stares unseeing straight ahead of him as he waits for his punishment.

Jan and Lukas see that the boy's lean muscled back and hard round buttocks bear the marks, some fresh and many more fading, of frequent encounters with the rottang and the whip.

The sergeant explains for the benefit of Jan and Lukas: "That was a very serious thing that Dirk did. Someone could've got hurt. So I'm gonna give him twenty strokes for that."

With that, he raises his arm above his right shoulder with the rottang parallel to the ground behind him. Then he brings it fluting through the air to smack against the boy's buttocks with a report that seems to rival the crack of the rifles still firing a short distance away. Jan and Lukas watch with interest as the boy grunts and rises slightly onto his toes. That, the tightly knotted muscles and the perspiration that instantly covers his body are the only indications that the boy gives of the intense pain he is experiencing. They notice, too, that none of the other boys in the platoon are paying the slightest attention as they continue with their firing exercises under the supervision of the cadet corporals and sergeants. They look at each other as they both realize at the same moment what this means: Corporal punishment is as commonplace here as it was at the Quarry.

Nineteen more searing strokes are delivered across Dirk's quivering buttocks but not once does a cry escape his lips. Jan and Lukas are impressed. As quarry slaves they were used to screaming uninhibitedly when whipped. It gave them some relief against the excruciating pain and, anyway, no one got any prizes there for bravery. They realize that they have a lot to live up to here.

Eventually, the punishment is over and Dirk stands upright. His grey eyes are brimmimg with tears and his cheeks are brightly flushed under the tan, but he manages to croak out a hoarse "Thank you, sergeant" as he snaps himself, a little unsteadily, to attention.

"OK, Dirk," says the sergeant kindly, as he ruffles his hand through the sandy bristle of Dirk's crew-cut hair, "Listen next time, hey?"

"Yes sergeant!"

Dirk reaches painfully for the clothes at his feet.

"You can leave those off, if you want," says that sergeant.

"Thank you sergeant!" says Dirk with relief, not at all keen to be pulling his khaki shorts over his bruised and corrugated backside.

The sergeant hands the rottang to Dirk to put away. Dirk inspects it quickly and a shadow of disappointment fleets across his face.

The sergeant, watching Dirk closely, laughs. "Still no blood, Dirk, maybe next time!"

Dirk grins wryly and doubles off, first to the landrover to put away the rottang and his clothing, and then to join his squad.

The sergeant, seeing Jan and Lukas looking at him quizzically, explains: "It's just a thing that these little toughies in the Ratel Platoon have… every time they get their blood on the rottang or the whip they get a small blood drop tattooed on their left forearm. They call it the Blood Order and it's big kudos to belong. Only five boys have it so far and Dirk is really keen to join."

"Hell, we been whipped bloody plenty times at the Quarry," boasts Jan, "Does that count?"

The sergeant chuckled, "No, you got to get it here and you got to get through it like a Spartan, honourably, without screaming, crying, moaning or jumping about!"

"Oh… " says Jan thoughtfully, then… "I reckon I can do that!"

"Good!" chuckles the sergeant again, "Now you better come with me… there's a few things we have to do before you can join the other guys."

Soon the sergeant's landrover is growling up the road to the barracks compound with Jan and Lukas aboard, thinking about the new life they are about to join, their hearts full of excitement with the expectation of meeting up with their old friends, Johan and Tiaan, once again.

And here we leave Johan, Tiaan, Jan and Lukas.

All four of them thrive at General Van Dyk's elite military school, the Nyati Agoge, and pass out with honours in their final year five years later, sharing between them just about every prize and award that there is to be had.

All four of them go into the South African Army and serve with great distinction in the Angolan War.

Some time after the war ends, General Van Dyk passes away and Johan and Tiaan find that he has bequeathed Nyati to the two of them. The General never married and had no children of his own. He always had a special bond with the two boys who dropped into his life out of the blue and he came to regard them as his own sons. Johan and Tiaan take up the reins at Nyati and they are still hard at work there, fulfilling the General's dream which they have now made their own.

Jan and Lukas join Johan and Tiaan for a while, but they have acquired a taste for the danger and excitement of war and they are restless at Nyati, although the cadets idolize the irrepressible pair.

Eventually, they leave Nyati to become soldiers for hire. They see service in Angola, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan and the latest news is that they are still alive and kicking, working for a security company in Iraq and never happier than when in the thick of the fighting.

Mr Basson and his son Hein, protected by friends and relatives in high places, become wealthy on the scarred backs of the young convict boys placed in their hands by corrupt police and correctional services officials. With the opening of South Africa's borders and the relaxation of restrictions that follow the installation of a democratic government, new opportunities for exploitation arise in the lawless interior of the still Dark Continent.

Mr Basson quickly discovers an almost insatiable demand in the interior for strong young white slave boys, toughened by hard labour and made docile by the whip. The 16 and 17 year old quarry boys that he used to send on to reformatories he turns to profit through trafficking. Hundreds of these physically magnificent boys, lost in the trackless paper wastes of the Correctional Services filing system, are sold into slavery in Africa, many finding their way through successive slave markets to the Middle East, parts of Eastern Europe and even Russia. Most of them find themselves in the sex trade, where their skills and experience are in particular demand.

Soon the Bassons are selling 15, 14 and 13 year old boys too as demand outstrips supply. Eventually they have to turn to scouring the slums and boys' homes for suitable parentless or abandoned boys to be bought from unscrupulous guardians or even kidnapped. Taking the long term view, they take boys as young as 8 with a view to developing and training them over time for the slave market.

But this is another tale which waits to be told in time…

The End