Martino

Martino is sociable, pragmatic and cunning. He appears considerably warmer than many of the mercenaries Guts encountered during childhood and speaks to the isolated youth about finding companions rather than living entirely alone.

That warmth does not prevent him from acting selfishly when survival is at stake. Martino understands that escape may require deception and is willing to exploit Guts as a distraction.

He is nevertheless not simply a betrayer. His later actions demonstrate that he retains enough regard for Guts to create another opportunity for the young mercenary after escaping himself.

Martino has no supernatural abilities. He is an experienced mercenary familiar with captivity, battlefield survival and opportunistic escape.

He is unusually flexible and can slip out of restraints, an ability that allows him to engineer his own escape after being captured.

Martino also possesses the practical instincts needed to identify opportunities for profit and survival, qualities essential to a wandering soldier in the violent world of Guts's youth.

Martino meets Guts among captured mercenaries following a battlefield defeat. He appears to help the injured youth escape by loosening his restraints.

Martino actually uses Guts's escape attempt as a diversion for his own, leaving the younger mercenary to be recaptured and imprisoned. Guts subsequently meets Chicchi while in that prison.

Martino later returns with mercenaries who attack the castle where Guts is being held, creating the chaos that allows Guts to escape after his forced duel. When the two meet again, Guts decides that their debts cancel each other out and leaves on his own.

Guts meets Martino as a fellow prisoner. Martino first exploits him as a diversion but later participates in the attack that gives Guts another chance to escape.

Chicchi has no direct relationship with Martino, but Guts meets the flower spirit as a consequence of the imprisonment that follows Martino's initial deception.