Gutish picture stone, 5th-7th century.

>>63946548
High end mercenaries (as well as patricians when they took part in the city militias) often had whatever the "full knightly kit" for the time was. So quite a lot of the people looking and fighting like knights on the medieval battlefield could be neither knights nor nobility, which is why the term "men at arms" has popped up to cover the lot of them. (And sometimes I think high end mercenaries were knights and/or nobility.)