Chapter 50 August 404 AD Britannia (Patreon)

            Guama smiled as his fleet approached one of the hundreds of river mouths found in Britannia. It was August 1st according to the Roman calendar, which was the start of a very important month for everyone living in Britannia, August was the first month of Britannia’s harvest. This was the perfect time to invade because their enemy’s grain stores were almost empty.

            Guama looked back at the trailing trimarans and snickered. The trimarans would not be able to catch up to them before they entered the narrow river that Britianna had an abundance of, and once they entered the river the trimarans would never be able to follow. It was clear to Guama that the Romans had yet to learn the advantages of the longships that the Cubans used. Guama, nor the other Cubans, were ignorant of the trimaran’s advantages. The trimarans were faster, and were able to mount more weapons than longships, but longships were able to navigate rivers easily, especially narrow rivers that trimarans could not navigate at all.

            All around the island of Britannia sixty fleets of longships were navigating toward one of the hundreds of rivers found on the island. Each fleet contained an average of fifty ships with an average of seventy men each. These men came both from Cuba and Hibernia.

Over the last year Guama had been surprised by how many men sailed from Cuba to Hibernia looking for a better life. Pretty much any Cuban man without hope of having their own family found a way to sail to Hibernia looking for a new and better life, both young and old. Even better, three fourths of the Cuban raiders came to Hibernia because they expected better loot from the Roman Empire than the Trade Alliance, Merchant Guild, or the Totonac Empire. Albeit most of the raiders were not directly helping Guama’s invasion of Britannia, instead they agreed to raid the Roman provinces on the mainland on August 1st. The Cuban fleet had one tactic during their invasion of Britannia, divide and conquer. Sixty fleets would attack sixty different places in Britannia, while the raider fleets would attack the Roman mainland. All in all over a quarter of a million men on hundreds of ships would fight and divert the Romans, keeping them off balance while the Cubans achieved their goal.

Guama suspected that his plans were getting leaked, as some of the Hibernians statistically had to be loyal to Rome. Hibernia contained at least two million individuals, and although over a hundred thousand gladly joined the Cubans, as they hated the Romans, some of the Hibernians had to like Rome. It was the only explanation for why Guama ran into a fleet of a hundred trimarans on their way to their objective. Guama didn’t care. The Roman navy was slow to adapt to Cuban raider tactics. Guama was sure Rome had issues with piracy over its long history, but there was a world of difference between some Roman fishermen committing piracy on other Roman fishermen, and an entire nation turning their raiding force to the northeastern part of their empire. The Cubans had no interest in a direct conflict with the Roman navy, and it wasn’t like the Romans could do anything to their homeland without crossing the ocean, so the Landowners back in the Cuban Archipelago could attack Rome with impunity. This was how the Cubans liked it.

            When Guama’s ship reached the small river leading into the heart of Britannia the Roman fleet was still an hour behind, and by the time the Roman trimarans reached the river the longships were out of sight. Everyone on the Cuban longships laughed as the Roman navy proved itself incapable once again. Oh, sure the Roman navy was capable at the game they play, but the Cubans were far too experienced to play the Roman navy’s game.

            After half a day making their way upriver, still several hours before nightfall especially with the very long days this far north, the small fleet was near their destination, a tin mine protected by a Roman fort. When Guama exited the ship, his buffalo was carefully led off of it. As for the other ships in the fleet, those with landowners carefully let the Landowners’ buffalo off the ships. The ships without landowners each had one horse. It was decided by the Landowners in Hibernia that although buffalo were limited exclusively to Landowners, their new Hibernian scouts could use horses. The horse riders were given fast fire bows, a steel helmet, and cloth armor with steel plates sewn in. The horses had a saddle, but no armor, unlike the buffalo. The scouts were intended to move quickly, and so they were given few supplies.

            The majority of the men were Sea Wardens. They carried the same equipment as the scouts, except they also had shields, bowie knives, tomahawks, and their pack with a few days supply of food.

            The majority of their supplies would stay near the ships, which would be protect by a token force of five hundred Sea Wardens, and looked over by the men’s wives. Guama’s wife Aine was in charge of the women. She was the daughter of one of the Hibernians who Guama made a Landowner because of his excitement with fighting the Romans. Apparently, his father was unjustly crucified by them. Aine had deep red hair, green eyes, and almost the palest skin that Guama had seen, only her cousin had paler skin. She was acceptable as Guama’s wife because she had pale skin, where Cuban girls had dark, she had green eyes where Cuban girls had brown, she had red hair where Cuban girls had black. In other words, she contrasted sharply away from Cuban girls, so politically she was acceptable, if only because she was a novelty. If Aine had been a dark skinned, dark haired Hibernian then the Landowners might have questioned Guama’s loyalty, especially with Guama only having one wife. But Aine’s novelty made her acceptable, as wives were viewed as playthings. The more novel the better.

            With all that said, Aine was very smart. She understood her situation very well. The Cuban Landowners normally married many women, and had many children. Only a few of those children would inherit anything. Guama thought that was untenable, so he would make her his only wife, and her children would inherit his lands, but this could only work if she helped manage things while he went off to war or played politics. With this in mind Aine fought for the right to go to war with her husband. When he agreed, the wives of the men who were following Guama’s lead of only having one wife, fought for the right to go to war with their husbands. The men were uncomfortable with this, but it was pointed out that the Celtic men brought their wives to battle, and so the men relented. As far as Guama knew, bringing wives to battle might be the only way to make having one wife, instead of many, work.

            With Guama’s camp in order Guama led four thousand of his men to the nearby tin mine. When they neared they found that the mine was surrounded by fields full of summer crops. Some like wheat were almost ready to harvest, others like apples, raspberries, and onions were still a month or so away from being ready. The only real surprise was that this area was warm enough to grow olives. Guama took several of its branches for his messengers, and beyond that he had his men pour coal oil on the fields as they neared the tin mine.

            When they came across livestock they took it for their own use. The livestock would either become meat for Guama’s people, or they would carry his supplies. In fact Guama needed at least a thousand beast of burden, as he planned on moving his ships overland to a different river later in the summer.

            As for the people, they ran before Guama and his men. They ran to the fortress protecting the tin mine. Britannia would be very different to conquer than Hibernia as Britannia was far more valuable to Rome than Hibernia because Britannia contained many of the best mines in the Roman Empire. Britannia was filled with copper, gold, iron, lead, silver and tin mines. Most of those mines had a fortress nearby. In fact each of those mines were getting visited today by Guama’s forces, assuming of course that his men were able to attack on the correct day.

            By the time Guama reached the fortress it was tightly locked. Unfortunately for the fortress it was surrounded by homes, warehouses, and an assortment of other buildings. The fortress was stone, except for its gates, but the buildings surrounding it were wooden.

            When they were five hundred yards away Guama sent a messenger on horseback. One of the Hibernians, as he spoke Greek and Latin. He held a white flag with olive branches on it and so was allowed to approach unmolested.

            The Roman in charge of the fortress called out to the messenger, “What do you want? Why do you disturb the peace of this place?”

            “My master wants this land. He requests you surrender.”

            “We refuse.”

            The messenger said, “No problem. Guama thought you would say that.” With that the messenger waved the flag back and forth. Guama simply took out flint and steel and created a spark. The next thing that happened was that a flame began following coal oil toward the fields.

            The Roman yelled out, “What are you doing?”

            The messenger yelled back, “We poured coal oil on your fields as we passed them. Now that it’s lit all your food will burn.” Then the messenger turned his horse and galloped back to Guama.  

            The Roman commander did not know what to do. That said he did not expect to see three dozen horsemen galloping toward the fortress. When he saw that he commanded his ballistae, all three of them, to shoot at them. The scouts easily avoided them. As they came closer he had his archers shoot at them, and they remained relatively untouched until they reached the safety of the shadows of the buildings surrounding the fort. From there they began setting fire to the buildings.

            For the next few hours scouts made their way from building to building setting fire to everything, only returning to Guama’s side when they needed more coal oil. Eventually they reached the tin mine and were gleeful when they found lots of lanterns and coal oil. They used it to set the timbers of the mine on fire and collapse as many entrances as they could find. Anytime they found a ventilation shaft they poured ten gallons of coal oil down it before letting it on fire. Meanwhile the Sea Wardens made their way to all the fields surrounding the fort and set every crop and orchard on fire.

            The Roman fort could do nothing but watch. It only had two hundred Roman soldiers. They sent messages through the communication tower about the attack, but most of the mines in Britannia were being attacked as well, so their message was lost in the noise. Meanwhile there were fifteen hundred civilians stuffed into the fortress, fearful that Guama would perform a long siege. Their worries were severely misplaced. As soon as the fields and buildings were burned, Guama left.

            The next days Guama sent out his scouts, and his men began a campaign of burning the crops and stored food of Britannia. Across Britannia sixty other groups of men were doing the same thing. Although the legions in Britannia began to move, it was clear that it would be a long winter for the Roman citizens living in Britannia.

Authors note- I learned something last week. After 7 to 10 days of being on penicilin you can get something called a penicilin rash. It is very simular to chicken pox. If you google the images it looks like all of them as it transforms over a few days. Pretty sure the tonsolitis is gone, now I just got to get over this rash. Oddly enough I still feel better this week than the last four weeks, albeit I am somewhat exhasted. I still plan on having a chapter friday as I have been wanting to write about the mages in my dungeon book for weeks now. I couldnt write last week because all I did was sleep, eat small meals, and sleep some more, so definitly looking forward to writting and getting other work done this week, even if I am not a hundred percent.

Thank you all for your patience, and have a great day!