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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. "

"Ah," Georg said, giving the flame haired young man a considering look. "This isn’t about Lady Ashlynn. It’s about the human Lord Dunn attacking the outlying villages, isn’t it?"

Ollie’s face burned at being seen through so clearly but he nodded as soon as Georg brought it up.

For a few weeks, everything had seemed calm while he worked with Old Nan to select a place to construct a new village.

She’d proposed a location nestled alongside a stream that eventually fed the river Luath.

While the reservoir formed by the dam they built in the first week wouldn’t be full until next year, just the process of clearing land and building the dam had given the displaced refugees hope of a new life beginning in the Vale of Mists.

That hopeful air burst like the Heartwood Clan’s original dam when word reached them that the young Lord Dunn had raised his banner and a small army to attack the partially evacuated outlying villages.

Without the protection of the fortified walls of the Vale of Mists, few villages managed to resist the onslaught of soldiers determined to raise their villages to the ground and burn any villager they found, whether that villager was already dead or not.

The horror of the attack had sparked a second wave of refugees fleeing for safety and leaving nearly everything they owned behind in the hopes that the Dunn soldiers wouldn’t chase them once they’d abandoned their villages.

"Milo left two days ago," Ollie said, his voice heavy and resigned. "He’s going to escort refugees as far as the walls and then he’ll go look for more. He’s not the only one who left the construction of the village to help people make it here."

"Commander Bassinger departed two weeks ago," Georg said, rubbing his furry chin in thought. "He took quite a few soldiers with him."

"Even Harrod went with Commander Bassinger," Ollie said with a trace of bitterness coloring his words. Harrod had been the first Eldritch person he met and until recently, he’d served as Ollie’s guard.

It wasn’t until the horned soldier left that Ollie realized how much he’d grown accustomed to the other man’s company and the feeling of safety he had when the other man was around.

Spats of violence between the refugees as petty disagreements flared in a tense environment had become more rare since construction started and almost no one directed any of their discontent at Ollie, though there were always a few who felt that their needs should be prioritized ahead of others and blamed Ollie for his choices.

Yet none of those disagreements had escalated to the point where he needed a guard to protect him and so it had been hard to protest when Harrod left to join Commander Bassinger in fighting the Dunns.

Now, with Milo’s departure, there were very few people remaining in the Vale of Mists that he considered to be his friends and that made it even harder to stay behind while so many others left.

"But you have work to do here," Georg observed as he started to understand where Ollie was coming from. "You can’t rush off to battle because you have to oversee the construction of the village. Do you think that you can’t become a knight until you’ve fought in a battle?

Are you upset because you’re being denied a chance to earn your honor? " the bearish cook asked.

"That’s not it, not exactly," Ollie said. "I, I don’t belong on the battlefield yet, even if I could go. Marcell has been teaching me but the nights are so short that I haven’t been able to practice much and I’m so tired by the time the sun sets that I’m barely making any progress."

"So you think that everyone is calling you a knight when you haven’t done what you’re supposed to do to earn it," Georg said with an understanding nod. "But, Ollie, don’t you think that you’re selling yourself a little short?"

"Huh? How so?" Ollie asked, wrinkling his brow in confusion.

"Here," Georg said, snatching a pair of cooling hand pies from the table and passing one over to Ollie before taking a tentative bite himself. "What do you think? Did they turn out well?"

"Hot," Ollie said, passing the hand pie back and forth between his hands and giving Georg’s claws an envious glance. Grabbing a small wooden bowl, Ollie dropped the hot hand pie into the bowl and broke off a piece with a fork, blowing on it several times before taking a delicate bite.

Rich buttery pastry crumbled as soon as it touched his tongue, carrying with it a comforting blend of decadent, caramelized onions, a sweet burst of fresh pea and tender carrots, all swimming in a thick pork gravy.

"It’s good," Ollie said around the mouthful of food, exhaling hot steam in several quick breaths before he finally managed to swallow the flavorful bite. "It’s really good."

"Ollie, how much courage did it take to eat that?" Georg asked with a toothy grin on his face. "Was it hard?"

"Courage?" Ollie asked, tilting his head to the side in confusion and looking at the remainder of the steaming hot hand pie in his bowl. "It wasn’t that hot."

"That’s not what I meant," Georg said, placing a clawed hand on the young man’s shoulder.

"If last year’s Ollie was standing here watching, the Ollie who hadn’t met Lady Ashlynn yet, how much courage do you think he would see in you, watching you breaking bread with a ’Clawed Demon’ as though it was an ordinary day? "

"If the Ollie of a year ago followed you to a village full of ’demons’ and saw you giving orders to cooks, construction workers and soldiers alike," Georg added, giving Ollie’s shoulder a firm squeeze. "How much courage do you think he would see in you?"

"But that isn’t..." Ollie started only to stop when Georg placed a claw over his lips.

"War is coming, Sir Ollie," he said ."Even a simple cook like me knows it. But if you talk to me about bravery and fighting for a just cause, then it’s hard not to call you a knight.

The other humans who came back with you, they mostly keep to themselves, but not you.

You try every day to help the people of the vale, whether they lived here all their lives or they just arrived. "

"If that isn’t having courage and fighting for just cause," Georg said. "Then I don’t know what is."