Spring Flower of Days Long Passed (3)

Uncuffed and fitted with armor, Guts is marched into a small arena ringed by spectators to face the nobleman's son, a hulking, heavily plated youth swinging a mace. Handed a blunted sword and warned of the boy's temper, Guts blocks the first blow but finds that, fever gone or not, he still cannot summon his real strength, and a heavy hit slams him back against a post. Rising, he checks that Chitch's bloom is still tucked under his scarf, then dodges so the mace lodges in the wood. His counterstrikes to the head and knee barely dent the armor.

Out of options, Guts recalls Gambino once teaching him how to bring down an armored foe. Following that lesson, he turns aside the next swing, jams his blade down the boy's glove to wrench the arm from its socket, then grips the sword by its blade and drives the crossguard through his opponent's eye. Before the crowd can respond he tears off the helmet, sets steel to the boy's throat, and takes him hostage. A guard defies the nobleman and looses a crossbow bolt, but a gust of wind knocks Chitch's flower loose, and Guts steps out of the bolt's path to catch it, so the shot strikes the son instead.

Arrows from beyond the walls cut down the tower guard as the gate bursts open and Martino's mercenaries pour in, overwhelming the garrison. Meeting Martino again, Guts concludes the two are now even, since his release has been secured. He then discovers the flower crushed under a horse's hoof, nearly stripped of petals, and carries it to the field of its kind as he swore he would, wondering if Chitch might find others of her sort there. Walking away from both, he is left uncertain whether the little spirit was ever more than a fever's illusion.

Guts is forced to duel the nobleman's son and prevails using Gambino's technique against armor. A stray crossbow bolt kills the son after wind knocks Chitch's flower free. Martino's mercenaries storm the castle and free Guts, squaring their debt. Guts brings the ruined flower to the promised field and wonders whether Chitch was real.

Concluding the three-part "Spring Flower of Days Long Passed," this twenty-six-page chapter ran in Young Animal issue fourteen on 13 July 2012 in the Elf Island Chapter. It was first published as episode 330 and became 331 after the volume 37 reordering. The term mordschlag refers to gripping a sword by the blade to strike with its hilt.