Prologue

April 1865

Cannons roared and gunshots echoed off the distant hills.  They blended with the cries of men as they were taken down in droves. He looked into the eyes of his neighbor. There was fear mixed with something else?  Regret?  It was probably regret. He knew he wasn’t the only one who wished he’d reconsidered joining up with his confederate brethren to fight for something he didn’t even believe in.

Aiden Kennedy owned no slaves. Having immigrated from Ireland with his mother and two brothers, he was all too familiar with the concept of one person owning another.  They called it indentured servitude in his homeland, but it was nothing more than slavery with a time stamp on it.  

He’d only been in Virginia for a week before war was declared.  He’d started out in New York, but the reception for Irish immigrants was poor and they were forced to live in conditions they wouldn’t ask a rat to enter back home.  His mother contracted tuberculosis on the trip over and died shortly after they landed.  His older brother, William, was killed by a blow to the head in an exhibition match by an opponent as big and strong as a bear within a week of setting foot on land.  That left him and his younger brother, Colin, to make their way in a strange and foreign land.  Colin was killed by a runaway wagon after stepping out of a tavern while pissed.

Aiden was disheartened and devastated. There was fortune awaiting back home.  Sadly, it was attached to his father, who was a ruthless brute.  The way his mother had gathered them up and snuck away in the middle of the night would have surely set his father off.  Aiden had no doubt that, if he stepped foot on Irish soil, his father would beat him until he longed for death.  

With his entire family wiped out within a matter of a few weeks, and heading back to Ireland not an option, Aiden decided to set out to explore a bit of the country and see if he could find a more amiable people to settle amongst.  His travels eventually took him to Richmond where he was hired on as a peacekeeper at a local inn.  When war was declared, he thought, ‘Why not?’.  He had nothing holding him back.  If he was killed, there was no one left to mourn him.  If he wanted to be accepted by the Virginia society, he had to support their cause.  The fact that they were solidly convinced that the war would be over in a matter of weeks also played a factor in his decision to join up.

Now, after four long years, he’d found himself fighting alongside men he’d gotten to know, appreciate, and trust; as well as strangers from another regiment in the state of Texas. One by one, he watched them drop around him.  He felt lost.  He was a man without a home or family.  Should he just lay down and let the battle consume him?  Or, should he stand and fight a battle he knew in his heart was lost?