Kushan Scouts (1)

In a deserted village, a gang of bandits strong-arms an orange-haired boy into surrendering the food he has scrounged. He hands it over only once his life is on the line, then lingers to ask the men how their meal tastes, a question tinged with hunger. Their praise soon gives way to the burn of poison. The boy flips open his vest to show the share he pocketed before tainting the rest, and when the enraged leader lunges, he stuns him with a swing of sausage links and cracks him down with a sheathed blade. He announces his name: Isidro.

More brigands arrive at the noise, so Isidro fakes tears and claims the Kushan army struck the first group. He nearly slips away, but one man notes there were no hoofbeats and no wounds on the fallen, and demands to know which way the invaders went. Isidro bluffs and points behind the man, whose face is promptly cleaved open by a spinning boomerang blade.

A Kushan scouting force has genuinely come, perched across the rooftops and ringing the bandits in. In an instant the scouts drop down and cut every brigand apart with their strange weapons, while Isidro cowers behind a barrel, weeping in terror. One scout discovers his hiding spot and raises a dagger to finish him.

Before the blow lands, every scout freezes at a new figure striding into the village: a warrior clad and caped entirely in black, hauling a sword far too vast for any ordinary man. It is Guts. His gaze never leaves the Kushan as they surge toward him, and he braces to meet the charge.

The chapter runs seventeen pages within the Conviction Arc and first appeared in Young Animal issue 1 on December 25, 1998. It marks the debut of Isidro, who will go on to follow Guts.