Daka

The tapasa feel an intruder at their backs and strike, only for their target to spring above the blows. Silat flings a chakram that the cloaked figure evades with a fluid mid-air twist. The empty-looking cloak settles, then rises to reveal Rakshas. The two recognize each other by name, and Silat guesses the assassin has slipped in to kill Ganishka, a charge Rakshas rejects. Just then the gate behind Silat swings open and Locus' cavalry pours into the city. Silat leaps aside from the charge and spots Rakshas scaling the battlements, so he and the tapasa climb the stairs in pursuit.

A guard warns Ganishka that the Band of the Falcon has breached Wyndham. The emperor orders resistance but shrugs off the threat, trusting the city's defenses. Kushan archers rain arrows on the horsemen, yet Locus spins his spear to bat most from the air, and the few that strike merely irritate his riders. Irvine and his own bowmen then annihilate the archers from a distant roof. Locus' cavalry smash through a wall of Kushan pikemen with ease.

Aware the attackers are all apostles, Ganishka decides ordinary soldiers will not do and calls up the Daka: horned, jagged-toothed humanoids bearing arms, shields and light armor, arrayed before the castle. From a balcony he boasts that these creatures were bred through dark means and are far from weak. Locus addresses him not as a man but as a fellow apostle, demanding to know why he stands against Griffith of the God Hand. Ganishka answers that Griffith may be a god to apostles, but he himself is the mightiest being on Earth, conqueror of vast lands, bent on proving his supremacy over God. The declaration stokes Locus' rage, and he spearheads the charge straight into the Daka.

Silat encounters and recognizes the assassin Rakshas within Wyndham. Locus leads the reborn Band of the Falcon's cavalry into the city, breaking through Kushan archers and pikemen with help from Irvine's bowmen. Ganishka deploys his monstrous Daka soldiers against the apostle attackers. He declares his goal of proving himself superior to God, and Locus leads the charge against the Daka.

Running twenty pages in the Millennium Falcon Arc, this chapter debuted in Young Animal issue 24 on December 12, 2003. It introduces the Daka in battle and stages the first open clash between Ganishka's forces and Griffith's reborn band.