Covered Wagon

A line of wagons tears through the woods with trolls close behind. Inside one, a now-older Rickert works an oversized repeating crossbow modeled on Guts' weapon while Erica reloads it, the two trying to shield the refugees riding in the other carts. When the string finally breaks, Erica upends a chest of sharp tacks onto the road, and the pursuing trolls stagger over them, though they scarcely slow.

A fallen tree blocks the path and lets the monsters close the gap, but a volley of arrows from Irvine, perched in a tree, drops them first. Rickert then spots riders bearing the Falcon banner coming up behind, led by Laban, who orders the surviving trolls put down. Warned that something worse than trolls is hunting the convoy, the soldiers face a cockatrice that lurches from the dark like an enormous rooster.

The creature's breath paralyzes one rider and foams his horse to the ground, and it snatches the man in its beak before an arrow pierces its eye. Irvine drops from his perch and fires again, only for the breath to deflect the shot. Rather than retreat with the others, he steps into the gas, sheds his hat, and takes aim, shifting into his apostle shape and loosing a far larger arrow fashioned from his new tail hair straight down the cockatrice's throat.

Rickert and Erica hold off pursuing trolls until their crossbow fails. Irvine's arrows and Laban's Falcon troops arrive to finish the trolls. A cockatrice attacks with paralyzing breath. Irvine transforms into his apostle form and fires a tail-hair arrow into its mouth.

This twenty-five-page Fantasia Arc chapter, "Covered Wagon," appeared in Young Animal issue twenty-one on 26 October 2012. It reintroduces Rickert and Erica after a long absence from the story.