Spring Flower of Days Long Passed (1)

Years earlier, a young Guts trudges among a chain of captured mercenaries, his arms clamped in stocks while mounted guards lash the stragglers. When he stumbles, the man behind him, Martino, urges him to stay upright or die from exhaustion or the whip. Martino credits divine mercy for their survival, but Guts counters that they have only been spared to be worked into their graves. After Guts falls a third time and a furious guard closes in, Martino shields the boy with his body, then loops Guts' bound arms around his neck to haul him along.

Asked about himself, Guts admits to a lifetime of wandering for hire, and Martino confides a hope that the boy might someday find a band of comrades worth dying for, leaving Guts without words. Spotting a half-built castle ahead and guessing the prisoners are meant to labor on it, Martino picks the lock on Guts' stocks and tells him to flee, claiming his own bindings are beyond reach. Touched, Guts trades names and vows to repay the kindness before scrambling down a steep slope with guards in pursuit.

The gesture was a ruse: Martino pops his own fingers out of joint, frees his arms, and climbs the far cliff while Guts serves as a decoy. A crossbow bolt drops the boy, who glimpses Martino saluting from above before blacking out. He dreams of a battle under Gambino, who once fed green recruits to the enemy as bait and later told him that self-interest beats loyalty. Guts wakes chained on hay, scolds himself for falling for so obvious a trick, yet still snares and eats a rat and burrows into the hay for warmth. Staring at a single spring blossom growing in the cell, he notices a minuscule girl peering out from behind its stem.

Captured Guts is protected, then betrayed, by the mercenary Martino, who escapes by using the boy as a decoy. A dream recalls Gambino's lesson that survival outweighs loyalty. Guts wakes imprisoned and spots a tiny spirit hiding behind a flower in his cell.

Opening the three-part "Spring Flower of Days Long Passed" within the Elf Island Chapter, this twenty-three-page flashback appeared in Young Animal issue twelve on 8 June 2012. It originally bore the number 328 before the volume 37 reordering shifted it to 329.