Battle to Capture Doldrey (3)

The first collision between Guts and Boscogn strips away ornaments instead of lives. Their charge snaps the decorative horns from the general's helm and knocks the covering loose from Guts' head, and the men serving under each commander flood into the surrounding brawl.

Watching from inside Doldrey, Gennon grows uneasy at how savagely Boscogn fights, afraid the general might cut Griffith down in the frenzy whether he means to or not. To prevent that, he has his bodyguards armed and rides out to direct the army himself, set on keeping Griffith alive at all costs.

Griffith then orders the Band of the Falcon to fall back toward their base. The move looks like plain flight, but Guts' expression betrays a purpose folded inside it. Boscogn senses a ruse, though his troops are hungry to run the retreating falcons down, and Gennon overrules the general's caution to unleash the pursuit.

Once the Purple Rhino Knights commit to the chase, Griffith stops the withdrawal and lines his riders along the riverbank. Screened by the dust swirling off the water, Casca gathers the second half of the band, while Tudor's garrison within Doldrey can make out nothing through the churning haze.

With Boscogn's knights drawn far from the walls, Casca sends her soldiers pouring through the great doors of the stronghold long thought impossible to breach. She urges them to seize it at speed and posts a detachment to stop any warning from reaching Boscogn.

Stripped of his own command, Adon looks down on Casca's advance from a high window inside Doldrey. This installment runs twenty one pages and belongs to the Golden Age Arc, first printed in Young Animal issue 22 on 12 November 1993.