The Nichan Smile

by C. J. Merwild

  Then hands grabbed Domino. A blade slipped under his chin, meeting the throbbing skin of his throat.

  “On your knees!”

  Domino complied, hands up in surrender, letting his own knife slip from his grasp. He glanced at Ero, who never took his eyes off his daughter, his face drenched with human blood. Several watchful men were already tying Memek’s wrists. Her leg bled profusely. The bottom of her trousers was shredded, her calf riddled with fragments of Kispen crystal.

  Then they tied up her father. Hands behind his back, another rope around his torso to immobilize his arms. The machete hammered in his foot kept him nailed to the now-soaked floor. The ropes were then wrapped around Domino’s wrists and chest, and Memek was forced to stand despite the severity of her injury. When she failed to get on her feet, crying and grunting at her aggressor’s face, one of the fuckers decided that dragging her on the floor if necessary was a valid solution.

  Then a linen bag reeking of sweat and dirt fell on Domino’s face.

  Trusting his ears, his nose, the length of his every step, Domino kept track of the following events in his mind. They were pushed out of the house, then through the village. The partisans both led and closed the procession. Apart from Memek’s panting and moaning, the dragging of her injured body on the ground, and the lapping of the swell, only silence. No one spoke, not Ero, nor the many humans who obviously didn’t come from this village.

  The smell that Domino had detected—the stench of death—came back to his memory. It was a similar smell that emanated from the dead wild pigs the Uetos brought back from the hunt. Domino was certain that if he’d searched Noktchen, he would have found the roughly buried bodies of the real inhabitants of this village.

  These were numerous, well-trained Blessers’ partisans. The human couple who’d encouraged them to stop by Noktchen to rest was probably in league with them.

  Those assholes. We have to run, Domino thought. There’s too many of these motherfuckers for us.

  “Don’t touch me!” Memek wailed between grumbles.

  A few steps away, Domino was hurled flat to the ground as the clash between Ero, Memek, and the humans resumed. Heavy breathing, grunting, muffled sounds of fists and blades biting flesh. Domino thought about getting up. Even blinded by the damn bag, he could use the distraction to strike back. But two feet crashed heavily into his back. A human had just climbed on top of him with both feet, pinning him to the ground, limiting his mobility. Domino gritted his teeth when pain awakened in his violently crushed belly.

  The next second, Ero growled. Then Domino jumped at the shock of a huge mass crashing right next to him with an abrupt gasp.

  “Papa!” Memek shouted as Domino recognized Ero’s scent close to him.

  Memek would bleed to death in no time without a tourniquet. Ero could carry her, even with an injured foot . . . if running away was still an option. They were tied up, surrounded. And Ero seemed to have lost his position of power for good. His status as Unaan no longer meant anything in the face of the death reserved for them.

  After a brief minute, Domino was put back on his feet, pulled by the ties that held his arms behind his back. Memek’s moaning resumed. Ero’s breath, barely noticeable among the heavy steps, the waves and rushing wind, was now fickle, modified by pain.

  Or fear.

  A blade still pointed in their back, or slitting their throat, they marched forward. Then they were thrown to the ground in one blow behind the knees. The bag remained on Domino’s head. The next moment, something closed around the nichan’s neck. He recognized the rough texture of the rope, its weight, its smell—a mixture of hemp, dust and sweat.

  A fucking rope…

  Those men were going to hang them, just like those assholes who had hanged Gus.

  Don’t you dare!

  Domino immediately struggled.

  Omitting the sharp pain beneath his ribs, he leaped to his feet and charged the nearest man with all his weight, with all his strength, still relying on his senses. His hip and bloodied shoulder smashed into the chest of the partisan he was aiming at. Domino heard his target fall and bellow in shock. He let the asshole’s screams empower him and moved into position.

  He was blind, but he had to fight. He wouldn’t die without giving his all.

  He sniffed the air, trying to spot his uncle and cousin through the cloth. They were close.

  The next moment, someone pulled the rope wrapped around his throat. Air failed to reach his lungs, but Domino resisted, straining all his muscles, starting with those of his neck. He stepped back sharply to unbalance anyone clinging to the other end of the rope. They pulled harder. The rope tightened and this time Domino collapsed. His head hit the ground. Pain and blood ragged inside his skull. They kept pulling on the rope. The young man was dragged through the tall grass by the neck. Someone shouted to get it over with. His bonds were impossible to break. In his true form, Domino could cut them. He knew it.

  Impossible to concentrate, to even try.

  Then his body rose. Pulled up by his neck, Domino flapped his legs.

  No! Not that!

  A blast from his past came into him amidst the emptiness and terror overwhelming him. Gus, small and frail, soaked in alcohol, hung from a tree, his legs jerking in spasms as oxygen abandoned him. This time Domino couldn’t get out of the bushes to save him.

  Gus.

  His heart pounded in his ears. His head seemed to be gorged with too much blood. It would just explode, separating from the rest of his body. He couldn’t breathe or tolerate it.

  Before long, he would be dead.

  He felt the heat and the hissing of flames.

  Death by fire and pain, Mora had explained to him. The Blessers’ purification.

  Air, air. Faces above!

  A distant, diffused roar rose, as if the world itself was rebelling. The next second Domino fell and crashed heavily to the ground.

  Air.

  Air filtered down his throat, spread through his chest. Beneath his panting body, the world shook harder.

  Something was coming.

  “It’s here! Run! Run!”

  Domino felt the humans running around him, then racing away. They were all heading in the same direction. North.

  A scream erupted. Slumped to the side, Domino instantly forgot his injured shoulder, the rope still wrapped around his neck, Memek, and Ero, whose fates remained unclear to him.

  This howling entwined his innards like a snake twisting itself around its prey, paralyzing him. He’d never heard such a call before. And yet . . .

  It was both his earliest and deepest memory, stronger than the first cry of a newborn, sharper than a blade detaching the flesh from the bone.

  Human and nichan screams added to the tumult. Fighting everywhere, human blood streaming, saturating the earth. It didn’t last long. Within seconds, the humans all stopped running and yelling. The echoes of their heartbeats died with them.

  “Are they conscious?” asked a deep voice.

  “Take the masks off,” said another one.

  Domino waited, motionless, full of the call that had just filled him with fear but also hope. Then the bag that covered his head vanished. The raw light of the sky and the steppes irritated his eyes. He didn’t care. A nichan leaned over him, untying the rope that bound his torso, and reduced his breath to a trickle of air. He didn’t care either. He looked around him, on the lookout. Nichans everywhere, most of them transformed, a few in their human forms.

  Then he saw the creature. Time halted its course.

  It looked at him with its black, shining eyes, in the depths of which burned a bluish spark. The creature was as massive as a dohor but thicker, as if shaped in the purest essence of strength. It was black as nothingness, so deep no light could cling to its skin. Its powerful legs were longer at the front, like muscular arms. The claws disappeared into the ground and blended with the earth, smearing it with dark traces the way water flows between rocks.

  A golden ring
surrounded the beast’s mouth, like a necklace.

  No, not a necklace.

  This ring floated without making the slightest contact with anything other than air.

  Faces above . . .

  And that smile . . .

  Domino stood up without thinking. Someone called him. He walked toward the creature who only had eyes for him, who was waiting for him, motionless. He sniffed the breeze by instinct. The creature was female.

  Domino stopped one step away from her. He looked at her entire body, filling his mind with all the details he could capture, plunging his eyes into hers. He didn’t need to ask. He knew, he felt it in his whole being. The humming had returned, not in his own body, but in that of the creature. Domino could hear it.

  The tingling buzzing.

  Not the taint of the Corruption, but pure nichan essence.

  A pure blood, no different than their ancestors from before the Great Evil. This was what stood before him.

  Hands still tied behind his back, the rope hanging from his neck dragging behind him, he took a deep breath. “Can you feel it?” Domino asked in a hoarse voice. He coughed briefly.

  The beast came a little closer. Her nostrils were invisible in the black expanse of her face. Nothing could be deciphered except her eyes and the threatening dark spikes of her smile. But she sniffed him nonetheless and tilted her head to the side.

  Domino continued, enthralled. “I felt you approaching. Do you feel it too? I am . . . I’m like you. They say I’m like you. I . . . I can’t transform, but I’m like you. You know that, right? Do you feel it, too?”

  A hand grabbed Domino by the arm and forced him to step back and fall to his knees. He was too out of his own body to protest. But the beast reacted on his behalf to the distance placed between them. She growled at the person who had just separated them, and the hand holding Domino moved away. Still unaware of his pain and the rest of the world, Domino got back on his feet, once again, and waited. The beast peered into his eyes. Domino was sure that this nichan understood him, that they both felt the force binding them to each other, like the surge of a forgotten past suddenly restored. If that was the case, then it meant one thing: his essence, what made Domino a pure blood, hadn’t disappeared. He was still the same. Whole.

  A smile spread across Domino’s lips. For the first time, he understood what the others meant when they spoke of miracles.

  “Lienn,” said a woman near Domino. “Is he telling the truth?”

  The beast made a hollow sound that echoed around them like the rumble of thunder, then nodded slowly. Whispers rose up everywhere. Domino finally dared to look away from her and scanned the area. Among the small crowd of nichans, he spotted the gibbet from which he had just been hanged, and then Ero who, ignoring his own injured foot, carried Memek in his arms. The Unaan had taken off his shawl and tied it around his daughter’s thigh in a tight garrote.

  Domino’s and Ero’s eyes met. The man’s expression was indecipherable but tense.

  The beast remained motionless for a while, staring at Domino. His wrists were still tied and he struggled against its restraints.

  “Leave it to me,” intervened the nichan next to him, a tall woman who, under her armor of skin and metal bands, seemed as muscular as Domino.

  She untied the ropes, and Domino pulled the one hanging to his throat and threw it away. By the time he looked up, the pure blood had turned tail, unhurriedly moving away in a graceful gait, as her hunters followed. The rest of them were already busy burying the dead as the air around them filled in a black mist.

  Domino watched the beast. He wanted to follow her. He resisted the impulse.

  “Our camp is a few leagues farther south,” the woman next to him announced, her eyes troubled, studying Domino’s still flushed face through the dark particles. “Can you walk?” The young man nodded. “Good. If it’s all right with you, come along.”

  That most certainly is.

  “Domino!” Ero called out to him. “Go get our things.”

  The order brought Domino out of his bewilderment. The cold crept in and blew a gust of wind through his sweat-soaked hair, biting the cut still drooling blood down his arm. Returning for good to reality, he rubbed his neck to chase the sensation of the rope from his flesh.

  Is that what Gus feels? Every time he has a nightmare, he feels this bloody rope around his neck?

  Well, now Domino knew the feeling. The anger inside him boiled over again.

  The scent of human blood rose from the bodies lying in the golden grass. Before the eyes of several curious nichans, Domino set off, passing his uncle and his cousin, returning to the fishermen’s village where they’d been attacked.

  As he arrived there, alone and out of sight, his heart fluttering, he smiled. Then a hysterical laugh carried him away and Domino let himself forget everything that had gone wrong for months. In fact, for years. Before he knew it, he leaned against a house and cried through his laughter.

  Today, he’d once again felt the kiss of death. But today he might have been saved for good.

  X X I X

  The camp presented itself to them a few hours later as the night gradually deprived the world of its light. Beautifully crafted leather tents lined up in several straight rows. They edged a modest, twisted pine wood on the other side of where steep, rocky hills gushed out of the ground.

  Armored nichans guarded the camp. They welcomed the hunters who returned unharmed, greeting them warmly with a hug or a relieved handshake. The beast, who had guided the group for hours, walked quietly between the tents and then moved out of sight. Walking in his uncle’s steps, Domino looked for her, scanning the darkening area, ignoring the glances cast at him and his family.

  The woman who had untied him after the ambush came to meet them. She had short black hair and icy gray eyes. A scar ran across her lower lip, slightly deflecting the slope of her mouth. When she spoke to the Uetos, Domino noticed a missing incisor on the lower part of her dentition.

  “Let’s take care of your wounds. Follow me, please.”

  In a tent heated by braziers, Memek was attended to immediately. Her wound was nasty, the crystal splinters deeply embedded in her partially shredded muscles. Ero squeezed his daughter’s hand, and a nichan who introduced himself as the camp physician proceeded to retrieve all the shards. None were to be left. The damage was already serious enough to make the young physician pale.

  After pulling several screams from Memek, the man concluded that the situation required more careful attention. “I have to make an incision to—”

  “I don’t care about that,” roared Ero. “Just do what needs to be done and do it now!”

  “Papa, stop,” Memek breathed, sweating profusely, out of breath. Despite the tourniquet, the young woman had lost a lot of blood in the last hour. Her face was terribly pale, her voice agonizing. “I don’t want that shit under my skin. Just don’t . . . ”

  Ero squeezed his daughter’s hand harder as her voice died and bent to kiss her fingers, as if to stop himself from talking. Standing behind him, Domino remembered an Ero overflowing with hatred after his son’s death. An Ero so devastated he’d lost his sanity. Domino had no desire to see that man again. They were far from home, outnumbered by a small army of hunters in armor and a pure blood. If Ero went after this healer, no one would forgive him on the pretext that he was worried about his daughter.

  She’s going to live. It’s only her leg. She’s going to be okay.

  But Domino was concerned too. Once again, his uncle and his cousin had shielded his body to protect him. The young man refused to let his cousin lose her leg—or her life—for him.

  The physician put Memek to sleep with a handkerchief soaked in a smelly liquid that twisted Domino’s stomach. Then he took out new instruments from a brown leather-covered wooden box and proceeded.

  A few steps behind his uncle, Domino looked up, the back of his neck and skull relaxing. Something had changed in the air, something familiar. A shiver mixed w
ith the warmth of blood pumped by a powerful heart. That presence . . . The pure blood, she was close.

  Domino looked toward the entrance. The wind shook the sides of the infirmary tent. The aura was getting closer. Domino swallowed hard when a woman with ashy blonde hair pushed the skins open and entered. The outside breeze came in with her, stirring the flames into the braziers. Domino was seeing her in this form for the first time, but he recognized her essence, like an imprint in fresh earth. It was the same beast who had saved them from the partisans and brought them here.

  She stopped at the entrance and looked at Domino with dark brown eyes. She was as tall as he was. Her olive skin was lighter than that of the Uetos. She had a long face with a broad forehead. Her thick lips opened up for a moment, then closed again, lips on which a tattoo began, extending down to her chin, her throat, getting lost under the fabric of her tunic.

  The young woman wore honorary marks. This detail troubled Domino without his knowing why.

  “You’d better come with me,” said the woman without taking her eyes off him. He himself couldn’t look away. “This isn’t the most appropriate place to talk.”

  Domino opened his mouth but Ero got up and stood in front of his nephew. Such a reaction announced his position of Unaan with a single movement. Annoyance rolled under Domino’s skin.

  “I don’t think I know your name,” said Ero. “Or your intentions. So my nephew won’t follow you anywhere.”

  The woman remained completely insensitive to Ero’s refusal. She still forced herself to look at him before continuing. “I’m Riskan Lienn, daughter of the chief of the Riskan Clan.”

  “Ueto Ero. My daughter.” He pointed to the bed where the sleeping young woman was being treated. “Ueto Memek, and my nephew.”

  Surprisingly, he didn’t introduce Domino, as if to hinder what was happening between Lienn and the young man.

  Domino took care of it himself. “I am Ueto Domino.”

  Lienn turned her attention back to him and nodded. “My intentions will be inconsequential. I only want to discuss without disturbing your child’s rest, Ueto Ero.”