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Message: <blockquote data-quote="muggie2" data-source="post: 5677689" data-attributes="member: 6681636">Roy was looking at the meal in front of him with mixed feelings. It was, to be sure, the best meal he'd had for a long time, but the things he was seeing and hearing, added to what he'd already seen and heard, were trying to drown out the demands of his stomach. They'd taken him back to the stable "to get his things", but he was pretty sure they'd wanted to check out his story. The sight that greeted them on the floor of the stables pretty much took away any tendency toward disbelieving him. He wasn't sure whether they sneered at his possessions when he dug them out from behind the hay, but he expected they would have if they hadn't been a trifle distracted by the blood.Back in the common room, they'd asked him if he was hungry, and he;d been unable to deny it. But for all that, what he was seeing and hearing were rapidly eating into his shock at seeing the knight so easily taken down in the stables.He'd always been brought up to believe that knights were the best fighters around, but the sellsword had made the knight look weak. Well, he was old, for a knight, and unarmored to boot, but his skills just hadn't been in the same league. And after all the tales of chivalry and nobility, the sight of a young knight hanging on the words of a blubber-jowled old glutton while the older man talked of his dalliances with courtesans while stuffing himself full of food and drink until it dripped off his chins, that was just, well, wrong.From high regard, he was starting to veer towards contempt for some of the knights. They couldn't all be like that, surely. Could they?He thought about it unhappily, as he tucked into his food. His eyes flicked around the room, hoping for some distraction from his increasingly uncomfortable thoughts. Armor, he thought, think about the armor. The old knight wasn't wearing his, and he was taken apart. What he himself had was shabby in comparison to what he could see here and there, even though not everyone was wearing theirs. If he wanted to avoid a rather messy fate, it would be a good idea to see if anyone was wearing anything that might give him some ideas about how to improve his own. He obviously couldn't rely on knightly protection & justice the way he'd always dreamed, or even, as he took a long glance at the glutton knight and his companion, knightly nobility. Yet for all that, the squire had tried to intervene to protect a stableboy, and the knight had been willing to put his life on the line to protect his squire. Haken obviously thought well of the House, or he wouldn't work for them as conscientiously as he did. He looked down at his plate and was surprised to see it empty. Well, whatever else a person may think of the House, at least they'd fed him and treated him gently. He straightened his shoulders. The shock of what he'd seen was less vivid, somehow, with a meal sitting warm in his belly. Yes, some of the knights may be less than he'd always believed, in nobility and in fighting skill, but the House was more than that. And yet, he had the feeling that it was down to him to defend himself, and that was still kinda uncomfortable.</blockquote>

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