Nah, I'm not really sure how the reader can be blamed for this. It was 100% setup to be that Pound got killed. We see a whole page of Oven swinging his glaive at Pound's head and there's absolutely no panel where someone came in to save him or any such implication.
Next thing we know, we see a glaive with blood.
I don't remember the exact contents of the chapter but I do recall that Oven moved on after this and never followed up with anything else. What the hell are the readers supposed to believe? Did Oven only just cut his skin and nothing else? Did his attack only knock out Pound unconscious and not kill him? Both are like the only options on the table and they sound retarded. Pound even gave a farewell/last few words speech here.
To believe that Pound didn't get killed there is just preposterous to me. There's only thing a reader could have believed while reading that. At least for me, Pound being alive just wasn't one of them.