Rickert

Blond and blue-eyed, Rickert has a youthful, boyish face that stands out among the battle-worn mercenaries surrounding him. The Official Guidebook lists him during the Fantasia Arc at nineteen years old, about 166 centimeters and 61 kilograms. More often than not he appears holding tools instead of a blade, and he is already piecing together a crossbow when he first steps into the story.

Mild-mannered, clear-headed, and marked by a childlike innocence, Rickert never suited the coarse temperament of the average fighting man. He understood at once that the brawl which cost lives began with Corkus rather than Guts, and he vouched for Guts joining the band on those grounds, a hero-worship that mellowed with time into genuine friendship. So gentle was he that Guts would not take him along on the road of revenge, deeming the youth incapable of ever hating Griffith. With Pippin he shared a bond close to brotherhood, and while Guts was away for two years he hammered out a blade for every dead comrade to stand over their graves.

During Guts' first battle against the band Rickert was rescued by him, and he spoke up on Guts' behalf soon after. He rushed in with the other mercenaries when Zodd nearly slew both Griffith and Guts. A broken arm later left him guarding the wounded rather than advancing, which happened to keep him clear of the fighting when the apostles descended, sparing him from the Eclipse. He looked on in horror as the Count and Rosine's swarm devoured the butchered soldiers, and was spared only by the Skull Knight, who shortly afterward left the senseless Guts and Casca in his keeping. He bore them to Godot's home in the mountains, took up the forge, and raised rough grave-markers of swords for the slain.

Roughly two years on, Casca slipped away just before Guts came back, and Rickert searched hard for her only to return empty-handed; he afterward re-equipped Guts with tightly packed miniature bombs for the journey. Once Guts reappeared with Casca beside him, Rickert finally heard the painful truth about the betrayal, and Guts flatly refused to let so gentle a soul join his hunt for vengeance. When the astral and physical realms fused, Rickert steered Erica toward Falconia, holding off harpies and a cockatrice from the back of a wagon with a repeater crossbow.

Within Falconia, Locus revealed the apostles' savage blood sports to him, and he went to his audience with Griffith sick at heart. Facing his old commander, Rickert struck him across the face, exposing the God Hand member as vulnerable to bodily harm, and declared that the Falcon of Light was no longer the man who had once led them. That defiance made him prey for the apostle Rakshas, yet he pulled through with help from Silat and the tapasa and his own cleverness, downing the airborne apostle by firing a cannon he had built into its head. Afterward, dressed in Kushan clothing, he helped capture the Seahorse, made himself known to Roderick, and rejoined former friends within the Kushan Empire.