The unit placed under Nathan Carter's command was so small it barely qualified as a unit at all.
To be precise, there were twelve of them.
They had no formal designation and no independent structure. In the rolls, they were vaguely listed as mobile service personnel. Their usual duties were escort work, scouting, message carrying—tasks too minor to ever merit a line in an after-action report.
When Nathanael Greene handed Nathan the roster, his tone was even.
"You're responsible for their operational arrangements, not strategic decisions. If something goes wrong, the responsibility is mine."
It sounded like protection.
In truth, it was a final test.
Nathan took the paper and scanned it.
Twelve names. Ordinary soldiers. No notable backgrounds, no officer records, no annotations suggesting special attention.
In other words—
If all twelve disappeared, no one's career would suffer.
That was reality.
Their first assembly took place on an open patch at the edge of camp.
The wind was sharp, the ground not fully thawed, brittle underfoot. The twelve men stood loosely spaced, their expressions varied as they looked at Nathan.
There was caution.Impatience.And unmistakable disdain.
To them, Nathan was simply the general's son—an inexperienced young man placed among them by circumstance.
Nathan did not speak at once.
He spent a full minute studying them, one by one.
Not their uniforms, but their posture. Their eyes. The way they shifted their weight against the cold.
This wasn't military training.
It was something else he had learned in another life—reading people.
"I'm not going to lecture you," Nathan said at last. "And I won't promise you glory."
Someone snorted.
"I'll say only one thing," he continued. "If you follow me, your chances of surviving will be higher than if you stayed with your original units."
The laughter stopped.
Not because the words were inspiring—but because they were brutally direct.
A younger soldier couldn't help asking, "How can you guarantee that?"
Nathan looked at him.
"I don't," he said. "I only make the correct choices."
This wasn't a speech.
It was a declaration of limits.
Over the next three days, Nathan ordered no conventional training.
No drills.No weapons practice.Not even a unified schedule.
The first thing he did was break apart their existing familiarity.
They were paired in rotating combinations and sent on different tasks: scouting routes, observing villages, recording British patrol timings.
There were complaints.
"This is inefficient.""We didn't do things this way before."
Nathan listened to everything and explained nothing.
On the fourth morning, he gathered them again.
"I'm going to ask a few questions," he said. "Anyone who can't answer won't take part in today's operation."
No one moved.
"First," Nathan said, pointing toward the western woods, "how long did the British patrol take to pass through there yesterday at dusk?"
Silence.
One man hesitated, then raised a hand. "About… seven minutes?"
"The exact time was six and a half," Nathan said, nodding. "You stay."
"Second," he turned to another man, "how many viable ambush positions are there along the narrow path?"
"Two."
"Wrong. There are three. But at least you saw the road."
He asked seven questions in total.
In the end, only five men remained.
The other seven were reassigned to their former units.
There was no humiliation. No punishment.
But everyone understood something clearly:
This was not a place where seniority kept you alive.
Among the five who remained, two stood out immediately.
One was named Elias Moore.
Quiet, highly observant, he preferred the shadows. Where others studied maps, he studied the ground. Where others memorized routes, he remembered sounds.
The other was Thomas Reed.
His opposite in every way—talkative, quick-thinking, capable of making decisions amid chaos. He wasn't afraid of mistakes, but he corrected them instantly.
Nathan called the two aside.
"I need two kinds of people," he said. "One who can detect danger, and one who can act within it."
They exchanged a glance but said nothing.
They didn't refuse.
This was the first time Nathan had chosen people of his own.
Their first real assignment was small.
No ambush.No engagement.
A night infiltration.
They were to approach a temporary British encampment without drawing attention, confirming the number of fires and the frequency of guard rotations.
To most officers, it barely counted as a mission.
Nathan knew better.
If this step was done correctly, everything afterward became possible.
As night fell, he didn't give the order to advance.
Instead, he asked a question.
"If you were British, where would you light your fires?"
There was a brief pause.
Elias Moore pointed toward a low-lying area. "Sheltered from the wind."
Thomas Reed shook his head. "But the smoke would be visible."
Nathan nodded.
"Which is why they'll light two fires," he said. "One for themselves—and one to deceive observers."
They confirmed it.
British security was looser than expected—not out of carelessness, but because they didn't consider such a small unit a threat.
On the return march, no one spoke.
Only after reaching safe ground did Thomas Reed murmur, "You don't move like someone new to war."
Nathan didn't deny it.
"I'm used to thinking about outcomes first."
The words were quiet in the darkness.
But to those who understood them, they carried weight.
The next day, Nathanael Greene received the brief reconnaissance report.
No exaggeration.No recommendations.
Only facts.
He read it in silence for a long time.
Then he said to his aide, "Keep this unit."
The decision was never written into orders.
But from that day forward, the nameless unit gained something rare:
The right to continue existing.
And Nathan Carter finally understood something fundamental.
Real strength isn't how much history you know.
It's how many people are willing to follow you—into the dark.