The Vampire & Her Witch

When they returned to the tent, Sir Gavin was standing at the entrance, wearing his usual, jovial expression as if the weighty matters discussed over dinner weren’t troubling him at all.

”Sir Ollie,” the shorter, almost stocky knight called as Ollie and Liam approached. ”A word, if I may? Lord Liam, we’ll only be a moment,” he promised.

”All right,” Ollie said casually, nodding to the side as he took a few steps away from the entrance to the large tent.

”You did me a kindness once, Sir Ollie,” Gavin said quietly, his demeanor becoming more serious now that it was just the two of them. While there were still many people bustling around the camp, fetching meals from the nearby cookfires or tending to the other chores of the camp, the large tent where Baron Loghlan had gathered with his knights and son had become almost a forbidden area that people circled wide to avoid now that the baron had indicated he intended to hold a private meeting there.

”Let me repay that kindness now with a bit of advice,” Sir Gavin said once he’d confirmed that there was no one close enough to overhear them.

”Lord Liam has been through a great deal recently,” the older knight said, reaching up to put a hand on Ollie’s shoulder. ”In that time, I’m sure you’ve done even more to help him than you did for me when I was injured. He respects you, and he’s grateful to you for what you’ve done.”

”I really haven’t done much for Lord Liam, though,” Ollie said honestly. ”Lady Ashlynn and Lady Heila have done much more to help him than I have. He really has been working hard the past several days, and he hasn’t had much time to spend with me.”

”Be that as it may,” Gavin said. ”He trusts and values your opinion; that much is clear. But the deference he’s extending to you is meant for the lady you serve, not for you. You understand?” Gavin asked, raising an eyebrow as he looked into the younger knight’s pale eyes. ”You’re a knight, and Lord Liam will soon take his father’s place as Baron Dunn.”

”There are limits to how much you can borrow your lady’s name and power around a man who will soon be a baron,” the older knight advised. His tone was light and friendly, like any senior advising his junior, but the hand he’d placed on Ollie’s shoulder tightened in a grip that held a surprising amount of strength.

”Lord Liam is a good lord,” Gavin continued. ”He listens to the counsel of others, and he fights hard for his people and his men. Sir Brennus, Sir Padraig, and I, we’ve all spent at least one summer campaigning against the demons with him. When he was young and new to the battlefield, he listened well to the advice of his seniors, and now that he’s older, he leads well on his own.”

”But around you, Sir Ollie,” the knight said, furrowing his brows as he looked at the mysterious young knight. ”Around you, he acts more like he did when he was new to the campaign trail. That worries me, and likely his father too.”

”It would be best if you let Liam take the lead as the lord he’s meant to be,” Gavin concluded, letting go of Ollie’s shoulder to give him a friendly pat on the back. ”Lord Loghlan won’t take it kindly if you continue to overstep, and you’ll only make things harder on Lord Liam in the end. Even if you’ve become friends, Liam won’t forgive you if you become a wedge between him and his parents. You understand, Sir Ollie?”

”I understand,” Ollie said with a bemused expression on his face. ”You all care for Lord Liam a great deal, and you’re worried that he’s already in a great deal of trouble. You’re afraid that I’m going to make it worse for him instead of better.”

”Just so,” Gavin said as he turned back towards the entrance of the tent. ”As I said, I owed you a small favor for your kindness before. Take this advice as balancing the scales between us,” he said, pausing briefly at the entrance to the tent. ”Because whatever comes up next, I have to do what’s right for my village and my lord,” he said, drawing a clear line in the sand with his words. ”And I can’t hold back on account of an unsettled debt between us.”

”There’s no debt, Sir Gavin,” Ollie said, nodding in understanding. He hadn’t mentioned bringing the man dinner during the tournament to create any kind of debt between them in the first place, but he was glad to see that the knights of Dunn were the sort of men who repaired even small favors with kindness in turn. ”And I appreciate your advice, truly. I won’t squander it,” he promised.

Ollie wasn’t just humoring the man. He still didn’t know how to navigate the expectations of other knights and lords, and the lessons Sir Thane had given him on etiquette could only carry him so far. Thus far, Ollie hadn’t put much thought into his position, and he’d been as free with his words as he would have been with Lady Ashlynn and the coven, but clearly doing so had ruffled some feathers.

More than that, however, it looked like his efforts to support Liam had actually had an opposite effect, or at least they’d had some unintended consequences of appearing to undermine the young lord’s authority before the people he would one day lead. It wasn’t something that Ollie had intended to do, and he took Sir Gavin’s lesson to heart in the spirit in which it had been offered.

Inside the tent, Ollie was briefly but pleasantly surprised to find that the ladies of the Dunn Court were still present. In Lothian City, it would have been incredibly rare for any meeting of the Lothian Court to include wives or daughters.

Ollie had lost track of how many times he’d been told that they didn’t need to bother with delicate dishes or artistic presentations when cooking for Lord Bors and his barons because ’real men’ just wanted the largest haunch of stag possible, roasted so that it was juicy and flavorful, and served up with plenty of bread to mop up the juices.

Baron Loghlan Dunn, however, seemed to handle matters very differently, and each of the knights who were present sat next to his wife, while the young squire, Cadeyrn, stood behind his father’s chair.

The greater surprise, for Ollie, was the fact that Lady Eira had retained her seat next to Liam, quietly insisting with her simple presence that she wasn’t one of the children to be dismissed from sensitive discussions. She’d asked for permission to sit at the high table, and once she’d received it, she intended to hold onto that seat, even if it meant she had to forgo the chance to refresh herself before discussions continued.

”Well, now that everyone’s returned,” Loghlan said as Ollie and Sir Gavin took their seats. ”I think it’s time we heard about this letter. So, out with it, Son.”