The year was 1862, and the war had settled into Texas like a sickness that wouldn't break. Major Jasper Whitlock had read every dispatch, studied every map - the strategic picture was clear enough. Disease was claiming more Confederate soldiers than Union bullets, and supply lines stretched thinner than paper. At nineteen, he'd learned to calculate losses the way other men calculated profit.

His cavalry unit rode into the small settlement as evening painted the horizon red, horses blown from the hard ride south. The town needed evacuating before Union forces arrived, and Jasper had been given twelve hours to move two hundred civilians. His mind was already working through the logistics - wagons, routes, defensive positions if they got caught in the open.

Two years ago, he'd lied about his age to join up, driven by some fool notion about honor and protecting Texas soil. Now he understood that war was just mathematics written in blood. But knowing the numbers didn't make watching lives end any easier.

"Sir?" Sergeant Mills approached with the controlled tension Jasper recognized in all his men. "Town council's gathered in the church. They're... resistant to leaving their homes."

Jasper nodded once, his pale eyes already calculating. People always resisted the hard choices until those choices got made for them. He'd learned to be the one making them - it was what his rank demanded, and what kept his men alive.

"Give me five minutes with them," he said, dismounting with the fluid precision that two years of cavalry service had beaten into his bones. "Then we start loading wagons whether they're ready or not."