Episode 95: Black Swordsman, Again

A stately column of soldiers, the Holy Iron Chain Knights, rides the border of Midland, drawing prayerful bows from the pilgrims they pass and marking their ties to the Holy See. The playful young Serpico needles the stern, mustached Azan over an attractive woman among the travelers until their commander orders them to compose themselves. A rider then overtakes the march with word that the red lake the order has hunted for has been found.

The lake proves to be a shallow, blood-reddened stream choked with the mangled remains of men and horses. Prophecy held that such a sight, born of a sun that dies five times, would announce a new angel. The commander lifts a helmet to reveal a woman near Serpico's age, Farnese, who names the being the Falcon of Darkness and warns it will drag the world into shadow.

Two years on, a ragged pack of thieves huddles under a dead tree in the rain, a bound and gagged girl named Jill kept apart from them, meant to be sold into slavery. When the rat-faced Deg gropes her, she knees him to his companions' laughter. Their leader recounts how heretics once disemboweled themselves before forest spirits and nailed their guts to this very tree, pointing to the nails and the faces worn into its bark as proof. Inspired, Deg drags Jill around the trunk to gut her, only for a thrown chestnut shell to bloody his hand.

The culprit is a cloaked Guts seated against the tree, who splits Deg's tongue for threatening to spill his innards and orders the rest to leave. When the leader answers with a flail, Guts drops him with a single blow of his prosthetic fist and warns the others off as his Brand begins to stir. The etched faces sharpen and the tree lurches to life, crushing several thieves as the survivors scatter, then reaches for the girl before Guts sweeps the Dragon Slayer across its trunk and nearly rends the monster apart in a spray of blood.

This thirty-two-page chapter opened the Conviction Arc in Young Animal issue 5 on February 28, 1997, debuting Serpico, Azan, Farnese, Jill, and Deg. Set two years past the Eclipse, it reintroduces Guts as a hardened lone hunter traveling with the elf Puck.