Episode 59: Demon Dog (1)

Alone in the throne room, the king dwells on the night Griffith lay with Charlotte, blaming the Falcon for taking his beloved daughter. His thoughts turn to the founding of the Black Dog Knights. Five years earlier, with the Hundred-Year War draining Midland of fighting men, the king gathered every able-bodied criminal in the realm and offered them service as soldiers. One convict, Wyald, put himself forward to lead them, and a large prisoner named Barbo bristled at the smaller man's claim to command. The king sanctioned a duel to settle it: Barbo's bonds were struck off and he was given a weapon, while Wyald kept his own restraints and took none. Wyald won, hurling Barbo onto an ornamental spike crowning a high tower.

The king has sensed something inhuman radiating from Wyald and notes that the Black Dogs boast a record rivaling the Band of the Falcon's own. With such hunters at their backs, the fugitives stand no chance.

At a farm near Wyndham, the farmers who still revere Griffith bandage him and provide a cart and clothing, having sheltered the band's horses during the rescue. Judeau drives while Casca rides in the back with Griffith, and Guts and Pippin keep to their own mounts. Casca lifts Griffith so he can watch Wyndham, the capital he once meant to claim, shrink into the distance. Soon after, Wyald and his men arrive at the same farm, and when a terrified girl is questioned about a wounded traveler, the Black Dogs amuse themselves by razing the farm and slaughtering everyone on it.

A flashback reveals how Wyald secured leadership of the Black Dog Knights by killing the challenger Barbo in a duel he fought while still restrained and unarmed. The band escapes Wyndham with Griffith concealed in a cart, and Wyald's knights reach the sheltering farm and massacre its inhabitants.

The fifty-ninth chapter of the Golden Age Arc runs twenty pages and appeared in Young Animal issue twelve on June 9, 1995. The Barbo duel establishes both Wyald's monstrous strength and the ruthless nature of the penal unit now hunting the band, while the farm massacre marks the price paid by those who aided Griffith.