Chapter Text
Ferrando couldn’t pinpoint the exact second it went wrong. It was sometime after Manrico’s men also stormed the convent and sometime before Manrico kicked him in the head.
From within the blur of pain Ferrando had to admit that it had been an impressive move; who knew a man so large could be so sprightly as to leap atop a font? Especially one they had all thought dead after the last battle. His continued health was a deeply unwelcome surprise and one that needed to be remedied immediately.
Ferrando rolled through the dizziness to push himself to his feet but there was a long length of steel at his neck and a fearsome lack of the sound of battle that was just surprising enough to shock him into stillness.
Ferrando took the unexpected reprieve to probe at his teeth with his tongue while he scanned the room from his supine position. That molar was probably loose before, but the split up the inside of his cheek was new. The outside of his cheek felt like Manrico’s boots were held together with hobnails.
The wielder of the knife allowed him just enough leverage to prop himself on an elbow and spit out a wad of bloody saliva. It seemed his was the only blood to be spilled in this holy place, because the soldiers of both sides were backing away, unwilling to commit to a personal fight already decided.
There, at last, he caught sight of di Luna. Manrico had his own long knife to the Count’s neck and di Luna’s sword was nowhere to be seen. Di Luna was scowling something fierce, and it was Ferrando’s own soldiers who were holding his arms in efforts to try and prevent him doing something stupid like try and rescue…
Ah, of course, the Lady Leonora.
Ferrando felt something small and indulgent wither away inside him as he realised that di Luna was oblivious to the entire set of the battle, the entire turn of the cards, Ferrando’s own tenuous position.
The only reason Ferrando was in this state, overextending himself and completely cut off from his men, was because di Luna had thrown himself into a fight he couldn’t win. Once before di Luna had fallen to Manrico in a duel and whatever strange pity seized the troubadour then would have been foolish to rely on.
It had taken everything in Ferrando’s power to drive Manrico and his men back and away from the fuming Count, he could feel the stinging nicks of their blades on his legs and hands where he left himself exposed. He wasn’t about to let another di Luna son die under his watch while he had the power to prevent it.
It had also taken, he remembered as he caught sight of a glare directed his way, a full soupçon of ungentlemanly conduct.
He had nothing against Lady Leonora, or at least nothing that wasn’t the result of his own bile and bitterness, but he had thought it obvious that if Manrico was holding the Count at knifepoint he would require something of seemingly equal value to hold hostage in exchange. He hadn’t even left a mark on her smooth white neck.
That heaven itself seemed to be honouring her choice of lover was something which was not lost on himself or his men, but still di Luna raved as though he was in any position to extort, to threaten.
They should have taken Castellor while they were in the vicinity, Ferrando thought as he let his head thud back onto the stonework, since all of Urgell’s men seemed to be packed into this one inconsequential convent. The castle must be nearly undefended.
He heard Urgell’s man above him call out to his posturing leader, “Come away Manrico, fate smiles on you.” Ferrando made the mistake of catching his eye, and he gestured Ferrando up with a jerk of his knife. “Up you get, cur.”
Ferrando tried to surge to his feet, but the knife was back on his neck and he could feel the tickle on his collarbones that suggested he was losing a chunk of his beard to the sharp edge.
“Slowly, or the Count will lose more than his lady tonight.”
Ferrando had to admit, begrudgingly, that this soldier of Manrico’s might have more sense than his master. Ferrando was taller than this rebel by a fair margin, but all this meant was that he was forced to remain in a slightly backwards, crabbed posture to avoid slitting his own throat. No fancy footwork was going to get him out of this particular hold as the rebel took a firm grip on the back of his surcoat along with a fistful of hair to stop him straightening to his full height.
Ferrando curled his lip until he could feel the incensed air coating his canines. His men were urging the Count to surrender because he’d trained them well, and di Luna was still raging because he was a fool in love. Ferrando heard Manrico taunt him back and shared an accidental, simultaneous sigh with the rebel behind him. The burden of common sense was truly a test of patience.
He saw both sides start to draw away, and prepared himself to be thrown after his retreating forces until di Luna lunged forward once more with a mad shout.
Ferrando’s knees hit the paving slabs with a crack as he was shoved down, the column of his throat bared to the chill air even as the knife rested on his jumping pulse.
“Hold, Count, or I’ll kill your officer right here and beg forgiveness later!”
His head was being pulled so far back that trying to look di Luna in the face made his eyes ache in their sockets, but Ferrando saw the moment the fight drained from him. It made that old, foolish fondness rise back up in his throat, ready to spill along with his life’s blood, and he crooked a smile at his master. Ferrando was hardly afraid of death, after all, it was what came after that frightened him.
“Let him go and we’ll leave this place in peace,” di Luna offered, hands empty and every bargaining chip he might have had on the wrong side of the board. It was sweet that he was trying, but he could be an idiot sometimes.
“Follow us from this place and I’ll leave him in pieces along your road,” the soldier threatened. No one gainsaid him even as Leonora blanched, and Ferrando realised that he was in the grasp of whatever this ragtag band’s equivalent of an officer was.
Di Luna had no counter to that, and Ferrando for the first time in his life watched his master go somewhere he could not follow as the two forces swept away from the convent and into the night.