Black Dog Knights

Cruelty defines this outfit more than any banner. Drawn from Midland's condemned prisoners, the unit revels in slaughter, pillage, and assault against helpless civilians, a reputation so foul that the crown eventually shipped them off to distant frontiers to keep them away from its own people. Their rallying cry, enjoyment and excitement, captures a warband that treats butchery as sport rather than duty.

For all their fearsome name, the Dogs bring no discipline or tactical sense to a fight. What they offer instead is raw savagery, overwhelming muscle, and a dread of their own commander that keeps them charging long after reason says to stop. Placed beside the Band of the Falcon, they are reckoned comparable in courage and battlefield record, yet that parity collapses the moment real strategy enters the picture, and the Falcon dismantles them with relative ease.

When Midland's long war with Tudor thinned the ranks of its soldiers, the king drafted able-bodied convicts to fill the gap. A brute later exposed as an apostle, Wyald, seized command by killing his lone rival, Barbo, and molded the resulting rabble into an infamously savage force before the throne banished them to far-off battlefields.

Once the Falcon rescued Griffith and cut down the Bakiraka, a royal messenger set the Dogs loose to hunt the fugitives. They descended on a farmstead near Wyndham that had sheltered their quarry, torching it and murdering everyone there. Casca soon spotted the pursuers cresting a hill with the mutilated farmers hoisted on their weapons. Guts and Pippin thinned the horde to buy time, realizing that dread of Wyald drove the men forward, and the Falcon lured the pack onto a bridge rigged to detonate mid-crossing.

Wyald and a remnant survived the blast, only to be funneled into further traps of boulders, fire, and arrows. Whittled down yet relentless, the Dogs pressed on until a reunited Falcon detachment turned to face them and Guts clashed his blade against Wyald's club. As the tide swung against the raiders, Wyald answered his men's wish to retreat by felling a tree onto them and hurling his weapon into a subordinate's face, then began his apostle transformation. He was mortally wounded by Guts and finished off by Zodd.