Bitten
"..."
I can only stare, blank, as black flame swallows the whole district.
Fwoosh—roar!Herta's Flame burns without discrimination. Zombies, the mansion walls, the garden carpeted in green—it takes them all. Caught in the black fire, the dead never even manage a dying scream before they crumble into handfuls of ash.
It burns. Red and black, it burns.
"So this is the true Herta's Flame..."
The words slip out of me before I can stop them.
"Hmph."
Esmela must have heard. Her face is just a little smug.
I stand there lost in the spectacle until a worry I had briefly forgotten comes alive again.
"My lady... how do you intend to deal with the aftermath?"
There was a reason she hadn't used Herta's Flame back in the city streets. The flame is extraordinarily difficult to control. Ordinary water magic cannot put it out, and once it has climbed past a certain scale, even the caster herself can no longer rein it in. All anyone can do is watch the black fire burn, and burn, until nothing remains around it to consume.
At this rate it will incinerate the entire district. No—if it keeps spreading, it may become a great fire that blankets the whole royal capital.
"Nothing to worry about."
Esmela's gaze turns toward Arit. I follow it, trying to see what she is doing.
The saint stands with her eyes closed, offering up a prayer.
"O Juten, Chief God. O thirty-six guardian gods. And among you, O Sigal, guardian god who willingly extended a hand to this frail seeker."
A host of brilliant light circles her as if to embrace her, shining gold. Her radiant golden hair ripples, soft as silk stirred by a faint wind.
"Enfold us. Guard us. Save us. Raise in this place a refuge where the weak may rest."
Fwaaah!
The moment she finishes, the enormous hemisphere of light I saw before blooms again across the sky. It descends like a lid and seals the flames of the whole district inside.
Fssss. The veil of light wrapped around the fire shrinks by degrees, drawing the blaze toward the center. Strange—the veil never touches anything material. It gathers only Herta's Flame inward.
The fire that had been devouring everything around it, as if it would never die, is stopped cold and can advance no farther. Little by little it loses its force and begins to subside.
Pop.
A moment later the hemisphere shrivels away to nothing, and in the same instant the black flames go out completely.
"..."
When the veil that had hidden the world disappears, nothing remains before my eyes but earth scorched black. Herta's Flame has burned everything with perfect impartiality.
"Haa."
Esmela wipes the sweat from her brow, looking refreshed, and offers the suggestion in a bright voice.
"Well then. Shall we head back to the mansion?"
The three of us walk streets emptied of zombies. Her announcement magic must have worked better than I expected. Every zombie in the area seems to have swarmed toward Esmela, only to be wiped out in a single stroke.
Once Herta's Flame is gone, I start to worry that some other noble's mansion may have burned, or that someone was caught in the blaze. Esmela brushes the fear aside.
"I kept the range to the surrounding gardens, so it never reached the mansions. There was no one nearby, either. Burned gardens and walls can be compensated, and that will be the end of it. The owners all associate with Father. It will be fine."
If the young lady of a ducal house says so, then I suppose that's how it is. I take her at her word and hurry after the two of them toward the mansion.
I look around. Just as in the streets of the royal capital we passed through earlier, corpses torn open by zombies lie scattered across the road and the gardens. Servants, most likely, who had been waiting at the mansions for the nobles attending the wedding, only to meet with disaster. In silence, I pray they rest in peace.
"O Juten, Chief God, receive the innocent lives that have just left our side, and watch over them..."
Arit seems to feel the same. Grief-stricken, she offers a requiem.
We go on without speaking.
And at last, far ahead, the grand mansion of House Herta comes into view.
It stands in the nobles' quarter in the northwest of the royal capital, on a broad stretch of land one reaches only by going farther north still. That House Herta owns a garden this vast in Herca, the kingdom's foremost city—and inside the walls, no less—is enough to show the might of the house.
A wide lawn spreads out before us. A wall of red brick, far taller than a person, encloses the family's meticulously kept garden without a single gap. Beyond it, a massive five-story mansion in the Renaissance style, its windows numbering in the dozens, displays its grandeur. It is a familiar sight. I have looked on it every day through the two years I have served as a butler.
Seeing it again feels strangely welcome. In truth only a few hours have passed since we left, but so much has happened that it seems far longer.
The closer we draw, though, the more ominous things I had not noticed from a distance begin to show themselves. Vivid blood is smeared thick across the red wall. Dozens of zombie corpses slump against it, inside and out. The barred front gate is crumpled inward from the outside, as if a crowd had tried to force a locked door open all at once.
"..."
Esmela's face hardens with every step toward the mansion. I can see it plainly.
"Please... let them be safe..."
Arit is worried too.
Even Esmela breaks into a forced run, heels and all.
"My lady!"
A familiar voice calls to her from inside the gate. Looking through into the garden, I see a boy about my age in a butler's uniform running toward us, waving.
"Everyone! The young lady is here! Hurry!"
He turns and shouts behind him. Other servants are already crossing the garden at a run.
"Just a moment, please! We'll open the gate!"
At his spirited cry, more butlers rush to the gate, seize both doors, and haul with all their strength.
Kreeeak—
The crumpled iron gate shrieks in discord as it is forced open.
"Please come in, my lady. Quickly!"
We are standing before the mansion's main staircase on the first floor. Every servant who had been inside has crowded around us, spilling their words out without any order at all.
"My lady, heavens. What in the world is happening...?"
"You aren't hurt anywhere, are you? My lady?"
"But my lady, who is the person standing beside Renit?"
Hemmed in by them, Esmela wears a thoroughly troubled look. Someone is going to have to restore order.
"Enough!"
I force my way between them, plant myself in front of her, clap once, and shout.
"Everyone, calm yourselves! We are servants of House Herta. Ought we not keep our dignity?"
At that, their murmuring dies down. A few send me displeased looks. I ignore them for now and press on.
"First, the young lady wishes to know what happened at the mansion while she was away!"
I glance back at Esmela. She gives a nod so slight it might or might not be agreement.
"So she will name one person and hear an account of what has transpired!"
I finish, bow my head to her, and step back behind her.
"You. Your name?"
Esmela sweeps her eyes over the crowd, then points at the butler boy who came out to meet us.
"M-me, you mean? I am apprentice butler Gillot Lorih! Third son of Baron Lorih, and it has been two months now since I entered House Herta..."
The orange-haired boy, awkward and green around the edges, is so nervous at being singled out that he starts spilling personal history no one asked for. Gillot is the newest of the apprentices. He is seventeen, the same age as I am, but a full head shorter, and his face still hasn't shed its boyish softness. He is unmistakably still a boy. Even so, because we are the same age he has taken a one-sided liking to me, and I can't quite leave someone that unseasoned alone. I look after him as much as I can.
"Summarize what happened at the mansion, and report."
Esmela cuts him off coolly and gives the order.
"Y-yes! S-so, um. After Lady Esmela left the mansion, we were carrying out our assigned duties as usual! I was, uh, hauling ingredients from the storeroom to the dining hall..."
"I am not asking to hear about your personal duties. Skip that and get to the point."
"Yes? Y-yes, my lady! Anyway, it was an ordinary morning, nothing out of the ordinary—but twenty minutes ago, that is, around eleven in the morning, someone suddenly started pounding on the front gate!"
From there, the boy's tone grows a little grave.
"At first we thought it was some unwelcome visitor. We meant to ignore them for a bit and then drive them off. But more and more of them started hammering on the gate, and they even began beating on the wall, so the butlers went out into the garden to see what was happening. And then... they weren't people at all. They were ominous things that looked like corpses..."
Somewhere in the middle of the report, Gillot begins to shake with fear.
"Gillot. Calm down, and tell it slowly."
He is so frightened he can barely get the words out. I have no choice but to soothe him.
"Renit? Ah, uh... anyway, at first we tried to drive them off with words, but they wouldn't listen at all. They gathered at the gate, and there were more of them all the time... and in the end the gate was forced open and they poured into the garden. Some of them even climbed the wall by stepping on the others. So the rest of the servants evacuated into the mansion, and the butlers and maids tried to drive them out by force."
He barely manages to keep going.
"But no matter how we cut them or struck them, they simply would not fall. Fortunately, someone realized a blow to the head would drop them, and we started taking them down one by one... except they kept swarming in from somewhere, and no matter how many we destroyed, their numbers never went down. It was desperate. But then!"
Color suddenly returns to his face.
"From far away, we heard the young lady's voice! Thank heavens—those things heard it, turned around, and left the mansion, and in that interval we managed to close the gate again! And not long after, the young lady came back!"
Having finished, Gillot looks strangely proud of himself.
"Hmm... I see. Thank you. Return to your place."
He beams at Esmela's thanks, turns, and starts to walk away.
That is when I notice the strip of white cloth bound around his left forearm. Blood is still seeping through. The cloth is stained red with it.
"Wait."
Before I even understand why, I call him back on instinct.
"Huh? What is it, Renit?"
"That left arm of yours..."
"Oh, this? While I was fighting those things earlier, one of them bit my forearm."
The moment I hear it, the blood in my whole body runs cold.
"I smashed its head with the flat of my blade right away, but the bite hurt like hell. I'd been called out of the storeroom in the middle of work, so my jacket was off and my sleeves were rolled up. Teeth went straight into bare skin. How's that for luck? Haha."
The poor boy laughs, good-natured and oblivious, with no idea of the fate waiting for him.