Kushan Scouts

The Kushan scouts serve the Kushan Empire as its eyes and its killers, usually operating alongside the tapasa and Silat, whose words mark them as members of the Bakiraka clan. Their trade is stealth and swift murder; they can wipe out a band of thieves before the victims even register the threat. They carry a bewildering assortment of blades and tools, from chakrams and katars to man-catching ropes and poison-laced arrows.

During the Conviction chapter a pack of scouts drops onto a ruined village to butcher the bandits Isidro had been robbing, then turns on the boy before Guts intervenes and slaughters the whole force. After Silat locates the 'Land of Oracle' at Albion, the scouts fall upon the ceremony's survivors, met by Guts, Serpico, Jerome, Isidro, and the timely arrival of Azan and Zodd, who scatters and kills them as everyone gapes at Griffith's incarnation. In the Millennium Falcon chapter, scouts try to poison Griffith during Mule's induction and are massacred by Rakshas, while another patrol shadows the disguised populace of Wyndham before Silat lets them pass. They finally watch the climactic clash against the twice-reborn Ganishka, likening the emperor to the destroyer god Shiva.

The scouts are an anonymous body drawn from the Bakiraka clan rather than a roster of named individuals, defined by their loyalty to Silat and the tapasa who oversee them. In the Golden Age film trilogy a handful appear beside Silat during the raid on the Band of the Falcon, identified in the tie-in artbook as Bakiraka clansmen. Their signature is the vast personal arsenal each one carries, a catalog of exotic Indian and Central Asian weaponry.