The day the order was delayed did not bring immediate relief.
If anything, it pushed the entire theater into a subtler state—everyone understood that something had nearly gone wrong, yet no one was willing to say it out loud.
In moments like that, the busiest places were rarely the front lines.
They were the margins.
Nathan Carter's unit was sent out repeatedly to confirm things:to confirm whether roads were still usable,to confirm whether villages remained safe,to confirm details that never made it into written orders.
They moved almost without pause.
Days on the road, nights resting in forest cover, sleep broken into fragments. Nathan no longer checked his historical memory. He focused instead on the present—smell, sound, human behavior.
This was a slowness he chose deliberately.
On the third morning, the unit halted near an abandoned farmhouse.
Half the roof had collapsed. Weeds choked the yard. It looked like a place the war had forgotten.
Thomas Reed was about to wave them forward when Nathan raised a hand.
"Wait."
Elias Moore had already crouched down, parting the grass.
"Someone's been here," he said. "Not soldiers."
Nathan stepped closer and examined the ground.
Footprints—irregular but light.No sharp edges from military boots.Civilian, but moving fast.
"They were running from something," Thomas judged.
"Or waiting for something," Nathan added.
They did not enter the farmhouse.
Instead, they observed the perimeter for a full hour.
Nothing happened.
Just as they were preparing to withdraw, a few hurried but muffled hoofbeats sounded in the distance.
Not a patrol.
More like a courier.
Nathan understood at once—this place might be a temporary information node. Not British. Not Continental.
Belonging to those trapped between the lines, trying to survive.
Such nodes were extremely dangerous.
Unstable—but often faster than official channels.
Nathan did not order contact.
He had Elias mark the direction, Thomas note the time.
"We leave," he said.
It was the second time in a short span that he chose not to confirm.
To some officers, that would have seemed overly cautious.
Nathan knew better. Once you touched something like this, you were pulled into an entirely different layer of war.
What he needed now was the edge of order—not the center of chaos.
That night, they rested briefly at a secure camp.
Nathan was called in for a report.
Not a formal meeting—just a handful of mid-level officers sitting together, trading recent assessments.
One of them remarked, "The British are starting to act like they're waiting for us to make the first mistake."
Nathan responded calmly, "Then don't give them the chance."
The words weren't sharp.
But they stilled the group for a moment.
Because they implied only one thing—
Delay.
And delay was psychologically exhausting for everyone.
By the time the discussion ended, night had fallen.
Nathan didn't return to his tent immediately.
At the edge of camp, he saw Abigail Warren.
She sat beneath a dim lamp, organizing a stack of papers. The night wind made the flame waver; she shielded it with her hand without pausing her work.
Nathan didn't approach.
He stood at a distance for a moment, making sure she didn't need help.
Restraint.
And respect.
Only when she looked up did he walk over.
"Busy today?" he asked.
Abigail glanced at him and nodded. "Always."
She didn't ask where he'd been.
He didn't explain.
For the second time, they shared the same space while keeping their boundaries intact.
"You said," she spoke suddenly, "after these two days."
Nathan nodded.
"They're not fully over yet," he said.
She smiled softly.
Not at the humor.
At the honesty.
"Then we'll wait a little longer," she said. "I'm not in a hurry."
There was no promise in her words.
Yet they were more reassuring than one.
Back in his tent, Nathan spread out the map.
The southern theater was entering a dangerous balance.
The British were not pressing forward.The Continental Army was not counterattacking.
Both sides were trying to force the other to move first.
In such a situation, intelligence mattered less than patience.
And patience, more than anything, was what Nathan could offer.
Before dawn the next day, a new directive arrived.
Not an advance.Not a withdrawal.
But—
Continuous monitoring of a key crossroads.
No deadline.No explicit objective.
A textbook order to wait.
Nathan read it and said only one thing to his unit:
"This one might take a while."
No one complained.
They had grown accustomed to the rhythm.
They entered the forest again, their steps lighter than before.
Nathan knew that whatever came next would not resolve in a single day.
This was not something one chapter could contain.
It was a situation slowly taking shape.
The war was stretching time itself.
And he would have to move more steadily than time did.