Episode 58: Flower of the Royal Palace of Stone

Casca has Judeau relight the lantern, but Pippin stops him the instant the group notices a strange odor. Down the passage, the female Bakiraka, wearing only brass bracelets and pouches of powder, strikes a spark to ignite the air and turn the tunnel into a fireball. The party sprints as the flames rush in, until Griffith glances up at a thin shaft of daylight in the ceiling. His movement alerts Pippin, who smashes a wide hole through to the surface, and the blast is drawn up and out into the open, sparing them as they hurry toward the graveyard exit.

Afterward the king executes the female Bakiraka for failing to kill Griffith and letting Charlotte be hurt. He suspects Anna of aiding the escape, but Charlotte insists she forced her handmaid into it and begs forgiveness for her. The king's patient manner cracks when Charlotte further asks him to let Griffith go free, arguing he has suffered enough in a year of captivity. After a silence the king relents, and she is escorted into the palace.

Neither Charlotte nor Anna knows the king never intended to spare Griffith or the rest of the band. He commands his guards to set the Black Dog Knights loose upon them. The soldiers find the unit's leader, the brutish Wyald, in the middle of bedding a woman. He waves off the order until told that Griffith is the mark, at which point he accepts, killing the woman, since the White Falcon is the very quarry he has been waiting for.

The party survives the female Bakiraka's tunnel explosion thanks to Pippin breaking through the ceiling. The king executes the failed assassin, publicly grants Charlotte's plea to free Griffith, then secretly orders the Black Dog Knights to hunt the band. Their leader Wyald eagerly takes the mission once he learns Griffith is the target.

The fifty-eighth chapter of the Golden Age Arc runs twenty-one pages and debuted in Young Animal issue ten on May 12, 1995. It introduces Wyald and the Black Dog Knights, the penal unit that replaces the Bakiraka as the pursuers, and exposes the king's duplicity toward his own daughter.