Storm of Death (2)

Judeau and Casca ride away from the giant hand where Guts and Griffith remain. Through her tears Casca wonders aloud whether they have fallen into hell or into the nightmare Griffith wanted, and she demands an answer from him. An apostle cuts them off, and Judeau fells it with a single stroke; a second chasing their horse drops to a knife thrown through its eye. A third seizes Judeau's sword arm in its jaws before he notices it, mangling the limb so badly he can barely move it. Casca stabs the creature's jaw until it lets go.

She pleads for Judeau to turn back so they can die fighting beside the band rather than chase an escape that may not exist, but he clings to the hope that she can still survive. As she yields, a hidden apostle bites the horse's forelegs away and pitches them to the ground. Another with two whip-like limbs bears down, lashing wildly, and Judeau throws himself over Casca to shield her. The whips punch through his back and out his chest. Gripping them with his ruined arm, he hurls his final knife with the other into the apostle's eye, letting Casca recover her sword and kill it. She returns to Judeau, who tells her to run alone, but she slings his arm over her shoulder and drags him along. Admitting he lacks Guts' toughness, he goes with her, gazing up at her as his sight dims and mourning that he never told her the important thing. His next step is his last, and he falls forward dead. Casca frees herself from beneath him, raises her sword with a shaking hand, and charges the apostles that had trailed them. Her blade shatters between one creature's teeth, and, left defenseless, she can only stand as they surround her, strip her bare, and begin to paw at her.

Judeau and Casca escape on horseback, killing several pursuing apostles. Judeau's arm is crippled, and he throws himself over Casca to protect her, taking whip-like limbs through the chest. He kills their attacker with a last knife, then dies as Casca drags him along, never having confessed his feelings. Casca charges the remaining apostles, her sword shatters, and she is stripped and set upon.

This installment of the Golden Age Arc appeared in Young Animal issue 12 on June 14, 1996, over twenty-three pages. Centered almost entirely on Judeau and Casca, it delivers Judeau's death and his unspoken love for her.