All of them soon took their seats at the large table stacked with food and wine. Rayne sat right in front of Baker, and Jeff sat on the left of his captain. His own party members took their seats on his side.

  There were more seats than people as the others were still out, but the captain barely asked anything about them. Rayne was a bit surprised since the man was unusually chatty and curious, talking about his days in wars to asking about the frontlines and the troll expedition he had heard whispers of.

  Nate took the lead in satiating his curiosity about the troll expedition, with Kesh pitching in from time to time. They spoke in detail of their scouting mission to locate the warlord before moving on to the battle that had happened.

  Rayne was content to let them speak, chewing pieces of steak and studying Captain Baker in the meantime.

  The man looked fierce, but he noticed the slight tremble in his hands when he picked up a jug full of ale to pass on to Jason. Age had made him weak. And by that action alone, he could tell that the man was a commoner who had risen to his current position.

  Some lower sons of nobles tended to seek out leadership positions in garrisons to live an easy life, but Baker didn’t seem to be one of them.

  That made things easier for the coming conversation.

  “You said Rayne here killed several trolls on his own,” Baker said as Kesh finished his own version of the battle. “I haven’t heard of such feats for new soldiers often.”

  Kesh smiled. “Yes, but it’s true. He fought like a madman on the battlefield. By the end of it, a troll even fell on him and he had to be dragged out of it. We thought he would be dead, but he has a tendency to surprise.”

  Rayne didn’t speak, quietly cutting another small piece of the steak with his knife. It was cooked well but lacked the spices he was accustomed to from back on Earth. But a little blandness in food was a constant in this world.

  He only looked up when he felt a gaze on him.

  “Jeff told me your last name is Frayser, is that correct?” Captain Baker asked, giving a glance to his deputy.

  “Yes.”

  “From the house of the fallen dukes?” Baker probed.

  Rayne affirmed with a nod, almost smiling when he saw the stunned gaze of both Captain Baker and Jeff. It turned out they hadn’t put two and two together till now.

  “I’m a bastard, and instead of getting the guillotine like my family, I was spared and instead sent to the army,” he said, expecting some contempt but only saw curious eyes. “Though I don’t know which one’s worse.”

  Baker chuckled finally, swirling the wine in his glass. “I asked that question myself the day I joined the army. Back then, monsters seemed like the least of the worries with yearly wars with different countries. Independent dukedoms trying to take control of more land. You know I fought with your father in one such war.”

  Rayne raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

  “Yes, it was coincidentally a rebellion by a border count who accused the crown of abandoning the region. It was a very small war that ended in two weeks, and your father, William Frayser, was a big reason for it. Who would have known that decades later…” The man stopped himself from continuing, then sipped from his glass. “Anyway, that rebellion quashing actually skyrocketed my career where I went from a common soldier to a squad leader.”

  “Sounds like you owe your current seat to the Fraysers then,” Jason spoke for the first time, lips curling up. And Rayne didn’t miss the tap on his thigh.

  It was time to push for answers.

  Captain Baker laughed. “You can say so, yes. I only wish I could have met your father once to thank him. Otherwise, I would still be out on the frontlines and not in this comfortable position.”

  Jeff moved to refill the man’s glass while Rayne finally put the knife down, leaning against the wooden stair and looking straight into Baker’s eyes.

  The old man tilted his head. “Do you have something to say, Rayne?”

  He nodded. “Yes, a question. I’m just wondering since you have finally attained such a good position for yourself and elevated your bloodline. How would it feel when the crown officially strips you away from your current rank and throws you in jail?”

  Captain Baker frowned, his easygoing smile fading in an instant. Jeff froze in his action, looking at Rayne as if he had gone crazy.

  “Why will the crown do that?” Baker said, voice sharp and loud. “And watch your tongue, boy. You are talking to a superior here.”

  “I don’t think you will stay that long,” he replied, then gave the man the answer to his question. “And the crown will do that because you and your entire garrison have colluded with deserters. Men who had been branded criminals by the army.”

  For the first time, the room’s warmth seemed to drain. Even the crackle of the lanterns sounded too loud. The old man’s face turned ugly. Baker took a slow sip from his cup, swallowing hard, before setting it down with deliberate care.

  Jeff seemed to shrink in his seat, but Rayne didn’t miss the horrified expression on his face. If he’d doubted his conjecture before, then that expression practically confirmed it.

  The food was forgotten in an instant and his party put down their knives and forks.

  “Do you even realize how big of an accusation that is to throw around in the face of a superior?” Baker lashed out, eyes boring down on him.

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  Rayne didn’t back down. He could tell that Baker didn’t have any way to defend against his words. Hence, the man was using the old cliché of pointing out that he was a superior rank and couldn’t be questioned.

  It might have worked if he was from the garrison and not under another warband altogether.

  “I realize that,” he said calmly. “Trust me, I would have been terrified if what I was saying wasn’t the truth. But since it is, I don’t really think I have anything to fear, especially since I have already collected the proof.”

  “What proof?” Jeff blurted out, only realizing a second later he had made a mistake.

  Rayne spoke, picking up on the momentum. “Proof that the supply amounts in the ledger and actual supplies didn’t really match up. I went ahead and checked in the afternoon, and what I found surprised me. Honestly, supply amounts and actual supplies never match. It’s common enough for the garrison captain to sell stuff on the side that I doubt even Captain Edran would have cared, but the difference was far more than the norm that is 10 percent. It was almost double that.”

  “You didn’t offer to load it up to help us, but in the hope that no one would notice,” Jason added, glaring at Jeff.

  Rayne smiled, looking at Jeff. “You should have given some stern orders to the guy guarding it. He allowed me to go inside the storage with just some copper.”

  Captain Baker slammed his fist into the table, frowning. Rage and frustration bubbled up on his face before he controlled his expression into a neutral one.

  Looking straight at him, he spoke. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “It wouldn’t have, but your deputy went ahead and gave us a completely fabricated tale of a cursed artifact and the reason for the family being hanged as a warning to others.” Jeff gulped as he continued. “Hearing such a story was enough for us to investigate further. And from what I found, several farmers barged into the town just a month back, asking help from the garrison.”

  “And to your credit, you did send a party since they seemed to have encountered bandits. Isn’t that right?” Nate said, but both Baker and Jeff kept mum.

  Rayne continued. “But none of them returned, so you sent out more people to see what happened and this time, they came back. Unfortunately, you simply told the farmers that the bandits were too strong to do anything and you had called for help, but they needed to wait in the town till then.”

  “It’s been weeks since then and you haven’t bothered to ask for help. All because you didn’t encounter bandits. You encountered deserters that scared you away from taking any action.” Jason gritted his teeth as the truth unraveled.

  Rayne didn’t have to say anything more as Jeff already looked pale. Captain Baker, on the other hand, was taking deep breaths as if trying to control his emotions, but he noticed the slight tremble in his legs.

  The man was scared, and rightfully so.

  The truth was far simpler to guess for Rayne once he had thought about everything that happened from the moment he had gotten this supply quest.

  Captain Edran had mentioned deserters, and on the back, they had been attacked by the slasher apes who were far away from their home. He had wondered why, and after thinking about the possibility of bandits being in the area, the answer was clear.

  Someone was hunting them and hence, they had run away to another part of the forest. As for why he assumed it was the deserters, it was simple. There were no bandit groups this close to the frontlines. Jeff had said the same thing.

  It could only be soldiers who had run away from their duties, and instead of heading deeper into the kingdom where they would have been found out sooner or later, they had taken over the barns. The family was probably killed in one of their raids, and they had put them up on the trees as a warning or some sort of sadistic pleasure.

  War changed people. Rayne knew it well, and former soldiers doing such a heinous crime might be uncommon, but it was entirely in the realm of likely possibilities. Why didn’t anyone in the town make a big deal out of it? Most of them were probably just ignorant of it, and the garrison could have easily stopped them from heading near the fork.

  But the question that bothered him was only one.

  “Why did you side with the deserters, Captain Baker?” he asked calmly.

  The captain didn’t say anything, but Jeff went red in the face. Time stretched as a silent standoff occurred between them. Nate tapped his fingers on the table impatiently while Jason frowned, glaring.

  Finally, the old man spoke. “You don’t have proof. You simply have your word against mine. I don’t think the crown will hear the words of a traitor’s bastard over a respected soldier.”

  Rayne smiled. “The crown doesn’t have to listen to me. But Captain Edran will, and once he notices the difference in supplies and we talk about the corpses we saw, I’m sure there would be an investigation. I don’t think you know, but the nobles in the frontlines are actively looking for deserters. Even a small involvement would cost you a lot more than the truth here.”

  “Captain Baker—” Jeff moved to speak, but the captain waved his hand to shush him.

  He focused his gaze on the four of them, and Rayne could almost see the calculations going on behind his eyes. He doubted the man was going to attack. Even if he was successful, the frontlines would send more soldiers to investigate after not getting the supplies.

  That was one big reason Rayne had decided to confront him.

  Baker seemed to understand it too, and finally, the expression he had carefully cultivated till now seemed to break. His head almost touched the table as he sighed before looking back at him.

  This time, Rayne saw the first traces of fear in his eyes. “You are not understanding what you are asking. It will be best for both of us that you leave with the supplies and don’t talk about it to anyone.”

  Rayne met eyes with his party. “What do you mean?”

  Baker lowered his eyes, taking a deep breath as if coming to a decision. “There’s a reason we have to side with those murderers, and trust me, none of it is because I am getting any benefit out of it. The truth of the matter is that they are simply too strong for us to do anything.”

  Jeff nodded, voice breaking as he spoke. “Yes, we have even sent out runners for help, but they never made it. The deserters are keeping an eye on who is going out of the city. They probably already know you are here too.”

  “They even threatened us in case we sent more,” Baker said. “We were helpless. We even have to send them the supplies, or they would have attacked the town. Please believe… me!”

  Rayne met eyes with Jason, who looked at him with confusion clear on his face. How many deserters were there that a garrison captain seemed so helpless against them?

  “How many men are there?” Kesh finally asked the question that was on the tip of his tongue.

  “Around four dozen. A dozen more than the men here in the garrison,” Jeff replied, and his answer only made his party raise their eyebrows.

  “If the deserters don't outnumber you by a lot, I don’t understand why you seem so scared of them.” Rayne looked at Baker, who shook his head.

  “It’s not the numbers we are scared of.”

  “Then?”

  Captain Baker didn’t reply at once, matching eyes with his deputy, who nodded. Finally, the old man leaned closer to Rayne and spoke in a low voice.

  “It isn’t the numbers. It’s the fact that their leader Marcus is a spellsword. The most dangerous kind of soldier.”

  ***