The New World Ch. 04

*Right now I just need to do a huge disclaimer for my story. Now I KNOW that this is a fiction website, and I KNOW that ninety percent of the stories have many inaccuracies in them, and I KNOW that I probably shouldn't care so much, but I do.

I know very little personally about the Nipmuc tribe, the identity that I chose for the setting of this novella. Many of the practices and clothing and crops, I'm just guessing. None of the names for the current characters and upcoming characters are actually Nipmuc, because I couldn't find any. Abequa is Chippewa, and Ahote is Hopi. I have had to put in these glaring inaccuracy because of time and research limits, and I hope that you forgive me.

However, I actually did research moose for the hunting scene ^_^, and many of the little throwaway details are accurate, such as the need to immediately gut a kill so that the meat doesn't go rotten.

Anyway, any errors are mine, and everything I got right is thanks to Jean M. Auel, wikipedia, and my crazy redneck uncle.

All characters are 18+

Please enjoy!*

Matteo was dreaming, and he could feel the warm body of another man near him. He moaned softly, and huddled in further. It was a good dream. It was good to be warm, and to be stretched out on a bed instead of curled up into a tiny ball in a dark dank hole. It was good to feel another man's body against him, a pleasure that he had briefly tasted with Brekken, but hadn't fully enjoyed since his short time with the pack.

Ahote shifted in his sleep and turned so he was facing Matteo. Matteo gasped a little as the sleeping man embraced him loosely and he was pressed against his chest. Matteo could feel Ahote's limp cock against his thigh. After the initial shock, Matteo relaxed his shoulders and rested his head against Ahote's hard brown chest. It felt good to mingle his scent with another of this strange pack, maybe they would accept him easier once his smell changed.

It was late noon. One of the aspects of animals that the wolf-men had inherited was the ability to always know what time of day it was. Matteo was hungry, thirsty, and he had to relieve himself. He tentatively got up, trying to squirm out of those strong protective arms without waking Ahote.

Ahote groaned softly and put an arm around Matteo's thin shoulders, pulling him down. Matteo let out an annoyed little grunt and struggled out of Ahote's arms. Ahote rubbed the sleep from his eyes and smiled up at the slender redhead. Matteo gave back a shy little smile. He was shivering, and the little fire in the wigwam had burned to ashes. Ahote looked over the boy's slender body. He wanted to touch Matteo, to feel that strange pale skin and fondle those tender pink nubs on his chest and to feel that hair like red cornsilk between his fingers.

But first he needed to take care of the fragile boy.

Ahote rose and yawned. Matteo shyly glanced over Ahote's body as well. Ahote had a lean dark body, darker then the others in the tribe, and with an angular frame. He had long black hair which was very dark and coarse. He tied it behind him with a band made of woven grass. It fell to mid-back. Ahote's hair was different as well, all of the other men in the tribe that Matteo had seen had heads partially or fully shaved.

Ahote slipped on a pair of leggings, the leggings were only tubes of soft worked buckskin that tied shut at the upper thigh with a drawstring of buckskin. Ahote covered his crotch with a breechclout of very soft pale rabbit skin with fur still on the outside. He put on a pair of moose-hide moccasins, and threw a warm shapeless hide covered in fur over his shoulders in a cloak. The clasp at the throat was made from two small interlocking segments of antler.

Ahote looked at Matteo, who stood there looking at the strange clothing with interest. Ahote held his empty hands in front of him as if to say that he had nothing. He gave Matteo a spare cloak like the one he was wearing and used thongs to tie a too-large pair of worn moccasins over Matteo's small white feet.

"Not have... furs. Abequa, woman will make."

Matteo nodded and fumbled with the clasp on his robe, which was made from a small predator's jawbone.

Matteo blushed a little. "Ahote?" When the man was looking at him he knew of no other way to signal his need but to put his hand over his crotch. Ahote understood.

"Come, Matteo."

Matteo followed.

---

The wind was fierce, picking up snow and making the walls of the wigwams flap. Matteo tried to hold the fur cloak tight around his body, but it flapped against his thin legs. First Ahote took him to the latrine, a short walk out of the camp, a deep trench dug in the soil. Ahote waited, looking the other way as Matteo shivered and fumbled his way around the latrine.

The wigwams were small personal homes, but there was a longhouse made of whole longs with a roof of homemade shingles and thatch mixed together. They went into the longhouse, where all of the communal meals were served. Women bundled up in cloaks came in with supplies taken form the raised platforms in the village. With each animal hunted, a hunter got to keep the hide and a share of the meat, everything else went to the storehouses.

As they entered the warm smoky longhouse, everyone sitting on their mats and low log benches turned to stare at the pale half-naked boy in the doorway. Matteo could smell the hostility coming off of them in waves. Instantly the good feeling that Ahote had given him, as well as the hope that they would accept him suddenly dried up. Matteo looked down at the hard dirt floor and shivered. Ahote hardened his mouth into a small slit and led the frightened boy forward, bearing the hard looks. He had dealt with them for far longer.

He sat Matteo down around one of the three fires on a mat made of reeds that had been dried and dyed and braided in a pretty round spiral pattern.

"I will... bring food."

Matteo nodded and curled up, hugging his knees, cringing under the weight of those hostile glances. Ahote was gone for what seemed like an age. The three women at the fire with him were eating something that smelled delicious from bowls. It was some sort of mush, but Matteo had no idea what was in it, other then some deer fat that had been melted in for flavor.

Ahote came back. "Succotash." He murmured, giving Matteo a heaping bowlful. The succotash was a dish made with ground boiled corn, three kinds of beans, and a shred of venison fat melted in. Matteo ate it with a scoop made form a clamshell with a rounded edge. It was wholesome and filling and delicious.

While he was eating it was easy to forget the uneasy hostile stares of the human villagers, but then a trio of wolves came in, two men and a woman. They were different then humans, Matteo could tell that even without the musky smell that rose from their lean bodies. They had golden eyes and a kind of loping grace. Their bodies were hard and lean and moved in hunter's rhythm.

They loped over to the fire, their eyes narrowed. Ahote stiffened slightly and put a protective arm around Matteo's shoulders. Matteo was grateful to him for that, and compared to the hell he had gone through up to this point, he could handle a few stares. He bit his lip and leaned into Ahote's warm body. At least with Ahote's help he could.

The oldest of the three wolves leaned forward, his eyes harsh and lined. He spat out words coated with venom, and Matteo flinched with the harshness of those words. Ahote tightened his grip possessively, but said nothing. His eyes tightened with anger and fear, and Matteo felt weak with fear.

The older wolf was smirking. So were the woman and young man at his side.

Ahote snarled the Nipmuc work for 'no', and he took Matteo's slender wrist and got up. "Come!" He said harshly, and Matteo ran after him, looking with terrified glances at the wolf trio, which had gotten up and were pursuing them. His robe flapped open in the fierce draft of the snow, chilling his warm skin.

They ran clumsily across the snowy clearing, surrounded by rings of wigwams. Matteo stumbled and cried out as his knees scraped bloody across a rough patch of ice. He cried out as the older wolf's rough hands grabbed his scrawny hips, dragging him towards a wigwam. Ahote was struggling and fighting with the other wolves, swiping his foot under the woman's leg, throwing the young man over his shoulder by the armpit and knee. It was a strange style of fighting mostly involving holds and kicks.

Matteo squirmed around and sunk his small white teeth into the swell of muscle on the man's shoulder. The older man swore and clouted him hard around the head and face. Snow stung on the tender welt on his forehead. Then a familiar musk filled his nostrils, a smell that had burned into his memory.

The Alpha clouted the lean older wolf, and with his inhuman strength and immense size it knocked the wolf away instantly. Matteo scrambled to his feet in the blowing snow and looked up at the Alpha with wide, fearful, thankful eyes. Conflicted eyes, had the Alpha saved him because the older wolf was doing something wrong, or because he was the Alpha's new property?

The Alpha snarled at the younger wolves to get off of Ahote, and they skulked away, slouching and not daring to look their leader in the eyes. Then Ahote ran over, his cheek swollen and blood leaking from a bruised and split place on his cheekbone.

"Come, Matteo." He whispered, urgently. Then he repeated the same thing in Nipmuc. Matteo tried hard to understand, he didn't want to be ignorant of their ways and customs and languages for any longer then he had to.

Matteo followed Ahote to a nearby wigwam that was not theirs. All the time he could feel the Chief's eyes burning into his back.

---

The wigwam belonged to a widow who spent much of her time treating hides and making elegant clothing which she traded for her tools and belongings. The tribe would never have let her starve, but this way she kept her independence. She had suffered through one abusive husband, and she never wanted to depend on a man again.

Her name was Abequa, and she was used to being treated like an outsider. She had been there with everyone else when a small bleeding wolf had been herded into the village and treated like a dangerous criminal. When her good friend, the outsider Ahote, came in with the little white boy clinging to his arm for dear life, she accepted them into her home and started to make a hot drink of chamomile leaves that she served in beautiful clay bowls.

Matteo drank the hot soothing tea in small sips, holding the cloak around his naked body and warming his chilled hands on the smooth surface of the bowl. Ahote was bartering the price of warm winter clothing with Abequa. Moonrise was in less then an hour.

Abequa was a woman of about thirty, with a gentle, graceful sort of beauty. Her face was round and plain, her body fit but gently curving. Her cheekbones and eyes were striking and she had exactly five strands of pure white hair twisted from her left temple down the the thick knotted braid that fell halfway down her back. She had already borne two adult sons, one who had become a wolf like his father and died after being gored by a settler's ox, the other who had married a woman and lived in a human village far away. Her cruel husband had made her pregnant three other times but beaten her into three miscarriages.

It was not allowed to interfere in a marriage, but when a perfectly strong healthy wolf got a brief sudden illness that ravaged his healthy body into something as frail as a rotten reed before he died, no one seemed to consider the possibility of poison. The council had kept their backs turned for the good and the bad.

Adequa's eyes were sharp, and though Matteo was covered by the cloak, she could see some of his injuries. When Ahote gestured for the boy to stand and remove his cloak so Abequa could measure him, she saw the rest of them. When she wrapped a thong with neat markings around Matteo's thin shoulders, he saw her brown eyes flicker and tear up slightly. Her eyes were on the silvery scars from the crazed and half-starved wolf that had turned him in the first place.

She touched the old wounds gently. Not even half a year ago, Matteo had been a simple human farmer in France. Matteo saw the look on her face, and he knew that he had another friend; a rare and precious commodity in this strange new world.

---

Matteo could feel the moonlight as surely as humans could feel the sun. The power was instantaneous and immense, flowing through him like a milky umbilical chord connecting him to his other; no, his true form. All he needed to do was reach out to wrap his mind in that brilliant chord.

Ahote felt it too, Matteo could see his eyes glowing hungrily in the dim light of the tent. Abequa watched them warily, and she could feel the wildness in the air. Perhaps that wildness was a whiff of the strange and intoxicating hormones mingled in their sweat, or perhaps the smell was like the hot ozone smell of lightning. Maybe it was just a feeling, but she could sense the wolf in them, it was in the air, as thick and heavy as cloth.

Matteo shrugged back his skinny shoulders from the slumped and protective position they had been in. He kicked off the old footwear and loped into the dim moonlight, his bare feet sinking in four inches of freshly fallen snow and his pale skin writhing up into a rough hide of goosebumps. Ahote followed, both naked, both starting to change.

The night was filled with alien cries, grunts and moans and sobs that were animal, but just human enough to send the camp dogs and cats barking and mewling and howling and hissing with fear. It sent the game in the woods trembling and fleeing from those bizarre painful shrieks.

When the human cries stopped, the wolf howls began. Pure primitive wolfsong shivering and stabbing into the icy night air, a sound to make the bravest hearts cringe.

Then the pack began to run.

---

The pack ran as one, thought as one, hunted as one. They ripped through the game trails beaten down by hundreds of paws and thousands of hooves, running through the ancient virgin forests like a river, separating and splitting and weaving together but never stopping. Within the tide of fifty-seven massive wolves, a small red wolf and a lanky brown wolf ran with the others, panting out silvery clouds that whipped behind them and blinking snow from their golden eyes. With the signal, a howl from the alpha, the solidarity of the pack shattered and the fifty-seven wolves split into twelve groups, the smallest being hunting pairs and the largest a band of five.

All of them except Matteo knew what to do, but he just followed Ahote.

Their hunting group had one other member, a hefty she-wolf with deep furless scar down one shoulder and a fur that was a beautiful pale tawny color. She led the way, while the males followed silently. Matteo was limping and panting with the pain in his hurt paw, but there was no way he would let himself fall behind.

---

Many human women lived in the wolf village, admiring the power and loyalty of wolf-husbands, but the only human men in the wolf village were those disgraced and outcast by their own who sought protection and amnesty. The wolf village was a sort of exile. Men (and a few women) came for protection and redemption, for in the village your past life meant nought, and all of the surrounding villages had made a pact never to war with the wolf village.

Many of the men in the village felt disgraced, for they could no longer hunt. The loud, twice-daily transformations scared the game from miles around. Only wolves had the power to run far enough to get game in one night. The storehouses were full of corn and beans and squash from the summer, but getting meat for the hungry wolf-men was a year-round undertaking.

Matteo caught the trail first, nose in the air. He whined for the other wolves to follow him. He could smell traces of a strange heavy animal that was vaguely deer-like, and he recognized the smell from the moccasins he had been wearing, but he had never seen the animal before.

The she-wolf growled low in her throat with annoyance and grabbed Matteo by the ruff. She was irritated with this strange pup, and thought that he was trying to undermine her authority. Little did either of them know, but Matteo had a longer snout, and more highly developed olfactory chambers then either of the American wolves. The American wolves were stronger and heavier then any of the European wolves he had ever seen, and the Alpha was far more massive, but Matteo's hearing and sense of smell and even his sight were marginally better.

Ahote growled and nipped the she-wolf in the shoulder, and she growled at him. Matteo had the lowest status of all of the wolves in the tribe, and Ahote's hard won status had mostly been lost when he started sheltering the little white teenager. The she-wolf was outraged at the behavior towards her, which in her eyes was little better then outright mutiny.

Then fortunately the small group of female moose moved close enough for the less sensitive noses of the American wolves to detect. The she-wolf put her nose in the air briefly, and then stalked off in their directing, keeping downwind and pretending that it had been her idea all along to save face.

Ahote gave Matteo's large floppy ear a rough lick and the two outsiders followed her.

---

Moose are mostly solitary creatures, occasionally herds develop, but this was just a seven-year-old cow moose and her twin female yearlings. She had given birth to them nearly ten months before and in another week or so she would be ready to drive them out. As far as moose mothers go, she was an evolutionary success, giving birth to twins all four of her sexually mature years and pregnant again.

Healthy adult females were usually about 700-900 pounds, but because of a scarce winter, she was a little underfed. Either way, she was still six hundred pounds of breathing, eating, groaning meat, and both of her gawky yearlings were almost five hundred pounds.

Ahote and the she-wolf hid in a close thicket of young birch while Matteo loped in a wide circle around where the moose were nibbling at young willow shoots. Matteo was terrified, and he wanted to help. Perhaps if he could hunt and pull his weight the awful hateful looks would end. He paused briefly to lick the ice from his wounded paw and continue on. The moose were getting nervous.

Matteo burst out of the underbrush with a long wolf-howl. The moose panicked, and ran away from him, straying in the wrong direction! Matteo ran through the thorny leaf-bare shrubs and snarled at the listing group of panicked ungulates. They turned, lanky legs moving in all directions. Moose were nothing to laugh at, those stick-like legs were powerful and tipped with sharp spreading hooves that had ended the lives of many regular wolves, and even a few of the massive man-wolves.

Ahote and the she-wolf burst from their hiding spot and the cow moose bellowed and charged at the she-wolf, furious and terrified and ready to fight. Matteo rushed in and grabbed the moose's flank with his sharp teeth, whipping his body back and forth to tear the flesh before leaping away to dodge those massive flying hooves.

Ahote rushed in from the side and jumped up onto the cow's broad back. The moose was strong, but two hundred and fifty pounds of wolf was enough to make her legs buckle briefly. The calves had long since fled, their mother-bond broken by survival instinct.

The she-wolf leapt in and ripped at the cow's loose hairy throat. The cow was strong, but with a wolf tearing at her flanks and a wolf breaking her spine with his strong jaws and a third wolf tearing out her throat, she finally gave up, and as the swatch of hair and flesh tore away in the she-wolf's jaws, the cow's blood soaked the snow and the spark of life snuffed out of her eyes.