Precious Thing

Griffith and Charlotte slip away from the gathering to sit together at a fountain's edge, where he lays his cape down for her. On the stairs, Casca intercepts Guts and refuses to let him barge in filthy and bloodied on the prince's private moment. She draws his dagger, cuts a strip from her own sleeve, and dresses the arrow puncture in his arm.

Charlotte explains that the party was her father's way of taking the court's mind off the drawn-out conflict with Tudor. Griffith drifts into reflection, revisiting an earlier talk during the autumn hunt about why men wage war. He argues that fighting is less about cruelty than about guarding one's dream, that every person should chase a goal, and that he has no patience for lives lived without aim. The words land hard on the hidden Guts.

Charlotte confesses she first took Griffith for high-born and marvels that a commoner carries such grace while staying grounded, sensing this is what draws people to him. At a distance, Casca tightens her fist. Griffith then defines friendship on his own terms: not the loyal soldiers who serve his ambition, but an equal, someone who lives for their own reason and would stand against anyone, himself included, who tramples that purpose. Guts is struck by this. Their moment breaks when a maidservant brings word of Julius' death.

Griffith and Charlotte share a private conversation at the fountain while Casca bandages Guts' wound and keeps him from interrupting. Griffith lays out his philosophy of purpose and true friendship, which deeply affects the eavesdropping Guts. A maidservant then delivers news that Charlotte's uncle Julius has died, an outcome Griffith secretly engineered, and he smiles at the report. Guts turns and leaves unseen, leaving Casca alone and confused on the steps as she stares at his bandaged arm.

This chapter belongs to the Golden Age Arc and ran in Young Animal issue 08 in 1993. It quietly confirms that Julius' assassination was Griffith's own machination, even as the two women panic over the loss, and it plants the seed of Guts' growing preoccupation with Griffith's idea of an equal.