Garrison

Nearing the city, Isidro gawks at the vast encampments, jousts, and merchant throngs outside the walls, which Serpico explains are the assembled armies of the many nations answering to the Holy See. His old service with the Holy Iron Chain Knights lets him name each force by its crest. Schierke, unsettled, tells Guts she finds so much martial drilling barbaric, while Guts tunes out the lecture, the scene stirring memories of his years with the Band of the Falcon.

Within Vritannis, the flood of noise and stench sickens Schierke, and Puck entertains the group by pestering people who cannot perceive him. At a mercenary recruiting post, Guts describes for Isidro how a band's leader advertises himself from a platform, since sellswords, unlike state-funded armies, must draw their own recruits. The talk turns to charisma, and Serpico recalls one name above the rest: Griffith, who led the Band of the Falcon. Quiet settles over Guts, and Farnese, recalling him cry out that name at the Tower of Conviction, starts to piece together his past. Isidro, meanwhile, praises the band's Raiders Captain without realizing he is describing Guts himself.

At the citadel gate, Schierke's witch garb draws the guards' suspicion. Serpico passes her off as a performer, and she slips through by clouding their minds, though the display forces her to hypnotize the gathering onlookers too. When Isidro urges her to swap her robes for a disguise, she refuses, and his frustrated swipe knocks her hat under a passing carriage. Wounded by his callousness, she tears up and bolts alone into the city. Ivalera reveals that after Flora's mansion burned, these clothes are all Schierke has left of her mistress.

"Garrison" spans twenty-two pages of the Millennium Falcon arc and first appeared in Young Animal issue 18 on September 10, 2004. It brings the party into Vritannis, the Holy See's naval hub, and lays groundwork for Farnese's dawning awareness of Guts' link to Griffith. Reassured that a witch can look after herself, Guts still sends Isidro after Schierke, who wanders into an empty alley and spots a thin, black, floating figure ahead.