Tournament

Twelve months have passed. At a castle well removed from Wyndham, a nobleman surveys a grand tournament where fighters of every station test their strength and skill, an event he boasts has won renown across many lands. Two combatants take the ring: Valancia, a hulking Tudor veteran of the Hundred-Year War, and Silat, a masked, dark-skinned man of unknown origin. For all his size, Valancia never lands a hand on the nimble Silat, who produces a bladed knuckle-weapon, catches the giant's massive sword, and snaps it apart until the veteran concedes.

Guts enters next and, with the host's leave, faces Silat. Baiting him into the opening move, Guts slips the blinding strikes, then parries the concealed blade in Silat's boot-toe with a hilt at the ankle and blocks the second kick with a bare hand; when Silat arches back to run him through, Guts is quicker and cracks him in the ribs with the flat of his sword, launching him through the arena fence. The impressed host tries to take Guts into his service, but the swordsman refuses, having come only to test himself against worthy foes. Almost in passing, the noble mentions a band of outlaws in a nearby wood led by a formidable woman, most of them remnants of the disgraced Midland mercenaries once known as the Band of the Falcon. Guts understands at once that their leader is Casca.

The chapter belongs to the Golden Age Arc and ran in Young Animal issue 16 on August 12, 1994, over twenty pages. It reintroduces Silat and, through the tournament, reconnects Guts to the scattered survivors of the Band of the Falcon.