Episode 60: Demon Dog (2)

Cresting a hill, Casca spots pursuers charging in the distance and warns the others. She is first to see that the hunters have skewered the mutilated bodies of the farmers on their spears and raised the remains overhead, and she recoils at the cruelty as Judeau names them the Black Dog Knights. Ahead lies a bridge leading to the woods where the rest of the rescue force waits, but the knights' speed means they will overtake Griffith's cart before it can cross.

Guts wheels his horse toward the enemy, declaring he will hold them off. Casca worries, remembering the day she left him to face a hundred of Adon's men, but he promises to flee if the fight sours, and Pippin chooses to stay and help against Wyald. The pair cut down knight after knight, yet the Black Dogs press forward regardless, and Guts realizes they charge out of sheer terror of Wyald. Wyald flings his spear, which bears the armless, legless body of the farm girl who aided the band, and Guts knocks it aside.

Wyald darts in close, seizing Guts' sword hand mid-swing, and only Pippin's hammer forces him to let go. The bloodlust pouring off Wyald reminds Guts of Zodd and the Skull Knight. Casca calls the two back across the bridge, and Wyald and his knights follow, aware a trap awaits yet plunging in for the thrill of it. Once the band has crossed and the Black Dogs fill the span, Casca lights a fuse running to gunpowder barrels slung beneath, and the bridge erupts.

Guts and Pippin hold the line against the Black Dog Knights while the cart makes for the bridge. Guts recognizes Wyald's inhuman bloodlust as akin to Zodd and the Skull Knight after grappling with him directly. Casca detonates the gunpowder-rigged bridge as the pursuing knights cross it.

The sixtieth chapter of the Golden Age Arc runs twenty pages and debuted in Young Animal issue thirteen on June 23, 1995. Zodd and the Skull Knight appear only in Guts' recollection. The chapter frames Wyald as another apostle-tier threat and demonstrates the rescue force's reliance on prepared traps against overwhelming numbers.