Episode 62: Demon Dog (4)

Eyeing Guts with amusement, Wyald remarks that Zodd once spoke of a spirited fighter among the Band of the Falcon. Their sword and club meet as the two armies crash together, and Casca passes the helpless Griffith to a medic so she, Judeau, and Pippin can enter the fray.

Casca watches Wyald turn aside Guts' strikes with ease. Guts observes that the man fights without training, driven by raw reflex rather than any discipline, and just as one blow appears to connect, his surprise mounts when he sees Wyald has caught the blade in his teeth. When Wyald's punch kills Guts' horse, Guts leaps off, plants his feet on Wyald's cheeks, and wrenches the sword free, toppling Wyald from his own mount. They exchange insults until Wyald invokes the mysterious Eclipse, goading Guts into a flurry of attacks too fast to follow.

Griffith lies concealed in a hollow beneath a tree's roots, watched over by two band members who promise the Black Dogs will not find him. He reaches for a sword propped against the wall, but his ruined hands cannot close around the grip, and it clatters uselessly to the ground; he cannot fight. Wyald lands a kick that hurls Guts back several feet, and a weary, frustrated Guts rises again to meet the gloating warrior.

Guts and Wyald begin their duel as the armies clash, with Wyald catching Guts' blade in his teeth before being knocked from his horse. Wyald's mention of the Eclipse enrages Guts. Griffith, hidden beneath a tree's roots, proves too crippled to hold a sword and cannot join the fight.

The sixty-second chapter of the Golden Age Arc runs twenty pages and ran in Young Animal issue fifteen on July 28, 1995. The chapter contrasts Guts' honed swordsmanship against Wyald's feral, untrained ferocity, and drives home Griffith's total helplessness, foreshadowing the desperation that will define his later choices.