Chapter 314: What Makes a Knight?
Why did Ollie feel like he couldn’t call himself a knight when so many people felt he’d already earned the title? It was something that had kept him awake long into the night more than once and recent events only made him more uncomfortable with the title that people seemed to use for him so easily.
"To everyone here," Ollie finally said after spending a minute gathering his thoughts. "Sir Thane is a knight because he is one of Lady Nyrielle’s progeny. But that’s not how Sir Thane became a knight at all. He was a knight even before he became a vampire."
"Sir Marcell wasn’t a knight when he became a vampire," Georg pointed out, pausing to sniff the air before shaking his head.
At this point, he’d made more hand pies than he could count and there was a certain smell that that accompanied a perfectly cooked hand pie, when the sauce of the filling had become so hot that it bubbled out over the holes poked in the top of the pastry and just a hint of the juices of the filling hit the hot stones of the oven. These pastries were close, but they weren’t quite ready.
"My father told me that Sir Marcell was a special kind of human merchant when Lady Nyrielle took him in," the cook said, scratching his head as he tried to recall the words his father had used. "They say he served a ’Black Market’ and that he had great skill at transporting merchandise that others would wish to seize if he was found with it. He was a dangerous kind of merchant."
"So that’s why Old Nan called him the ’Black Merchant,’" Ollie said with a chuckle. He’d never imagined that the youthful looking vampire had been a smuggler, but after taking several lessons in fighting with knives from the former merchant, Ollie finally understood why the vampire talked about fighting in narrow alleys and unsavory bars as much as he did.
"But Sir Marcell is still a dangerous man," Ollie said, pushing off the wall when he saw Georg move toward the ovens and grabbing a towel to help pulling the long baking trays out of the oven, transferring the hot hand pies to a counter to cool. "He’s qualified to call himself a knight even if he was never granted the title until he came to the Vale of Mists."
"So you think that Lady Ashlynn won’t recognize you as a knight because you’re not a dangerous man?" Georg asked as they returned to leaning against the cool stone wall to watch the hand pies cool. "Does a man need to be a warrior to be a knight?"
"Yes, he does," Ollie said, hanging his head low. "A man is only recognized as a true knight after demonstrating his skill at arms, either on the field of battle or in tournaments during times of peace." he explained. "Even then, a man wouldn’t be considered a knight if all he had done was fight mock duels in competitions. Without putting his own life in jeopardy and fighting for just cause, a man can’t be a real knight."