Battle

New Basilicata, Western Wall battery.

The battle was in full swing, but it had yet to reach this side. Still, this brief peace clearly would not last long.

Edgar was a Sicilian immigrant, an utterly ordinary militia captain. He had once spent some time in the north as an indentured servant.

There had been no security, no wages, and not even enough food to fill his stomach.

He could only watch helplessly as his wife entered a local tavern to work as a prostitute in order to make a living. In the end, she left with an Englishman said to have status, without looking back. The last news he heard of her was that the Englishman had grown tired of her and sold her off to a red-light district.

Later, Edgar finally escaped his status as an indentured servant and joined the local Latin community gang—the so-called Mafia.

But the Mafia, which claimed it would stand up for its countrymen and spare them from being bullied by the locals, was no charity. They imitated the wolf-clan family societies of their homeland, but without blood ties to bind them, every countryman from back home was merely a resource in their hands.

Women sold their bodies. Men sold their bodies too, only in a different sense.

After the gang ordered him to kill a rival, he finally left the organization. To escape their pursuit, he boarded a smuggling ship and came to Texas.

British North America—or America—had never been the paradise paved with gold that the Englishmen advertised.

Or rather, the paradise of gold the Englishmen spoke of was built upon the bodies of immigrants like them, immigrants without status or even basic human rights.

They were human resources, just like black slaves—perhaps even cheaper.

When he first arrived in Texas, he