Casca (3)

Casca carries on with her account. The Band of the Falcon steadily swelled and somehow went on winning, a company of commoners' children led by a commoner boy. In time it was drawn into a feudal lord's quarrel. The noble behind it was rich and powerful, but notorious for his appetite for young boys, and the sight of his child slaves sickened the young Casca until Griffith calmed her.

After one battle, Griffith, Casca, and Pippin came upon the corpse of a boy who had only recently enlisted. Casca had never known him, yet the death struck Griffith deeply, for he grasped that the boy had died to further his dream and would have looked on him as a hero. From that moment Casca no longer saw Griffith as the flawless idol she once had.

A few nights on, she spotted him standing on the castle balcony and called up, only to see the boy-loving lord there beside him, drawing him inside. Griffith went with the noble after one last look down at her. The next morning she found Griffith bathing in the river, and when he noticed her he asked her not to go. As she drew closer he asked whether he was unclean, and her question about why he had gone to the lord's chamber confirmed her fear that they had slept together.

Griffith explained it was no matter of mutual desire. The noble had offered a substantial war chest in return, funds he needed to meet the mounting cost of the ever-larger band, and he meant to honor the fallen by reaching his dream as swiftly as he could. Lost in his own words, he began raking deep cuts into his arms, until Casca broke off his self-harm by wading into the water and wrapping herself around him from behind. When he turned to her, the sorrow had left his face. She closes her story by saying Griffith is not strong by nature but forces himself onward through every loss, and because his aim is so grand the losses must be worth it, she wants to be at his side when he attains it.

The Band of the Falcon grows and enters a lecherous noble's war. A recruit's death shakes Griffith and dims Casca's idol-worship of him. Griffith sleeps with the noble for a war chest to fund the band, and Casca, finding him cutting his own arms in the river, embraces him and resolves to stand beside him until he achieves his dream.

Part three of the Casca sequence in the Golden Age Arc ran in Young Animal issue 13 on June 25, 1993, across twenty-three pages. Framed as Casca's recollection to Guts, it exposes the price Griffith is willing to pay for his ambition and deepens both his character and Casca's devotion, groundwork for the tragedy still to come.