Chapter 4 August 405 AD Britannia-“Siege” (Patreon)

Note this chapter is Very Very violent. I have notes where it starts and ends. Have a great day yall

            As Guama’s forces, with prisoners in tow, made their way to the fortress protecting a tin mine, Guama couldn’t help but think about the bad news he received. Rome had finally gotten ahold of the fast-fire bows and were using them against the raiding forces on the continent. That meant that Guama would have to speed up his timeline. So instead of taking two or three years to starve the forts into submission, they would actually have to practice some siegecraft.

            Their plan began the previous year, when sixty different fleets of Cuban longships landed and began destroying crops on Britannia right before the harvest. Thanks to their buffalo, horses, and coal oil, they were able to easily wipe out a third of their crop. To make matters worse for the locals, most of their villages didn’t have walls, as Rome had brought centuries of peace to their shores. The only towns with walls either housed a mine or were designated fortresses for the Roman military, and so the Cuban forces were able to easily find and destroy any stored grain inside the thousands of towns and villages on the island, not to mention their unprotected communication towers. The Romans built them tall in Britannia, but largely unprotected.

            While the Cubans were destroying the Britannian’s food supply and communication towers, they largely avoided killing the civilians. The reason were many, but the largest was the reality that the Cuban’s couldn’t attack the food supply inside walled villages and towns without a siege, but refugees could enter and significantly reduce their supplies.

            The Cubans did such a good job destroying crops and creating a starving, roving refugee crisis, that by December, the walled towns and fortresses blocked access to anyone who did not live in them, and by February, the local Roman garrisons were having to raid starving villages to keep their legionnaires strong enough to fight. Guama never expected their attacks on the food supply to be so effective. In fact, as they continued fighting the Romans, Guama noticed they were becoming weaker and weaker.

            The war on Britannia was currently going the Cubans' way as the Cubans and their Hibernian allies were confounding the Romans with their hit-and-run tactics, and the Romans still didn’t seem to understand that the two groups were moving their camp two or three times a week. The Cuban longship helped with that immensely, as the long, relatively light ships were able to be moved out of one river and dragged over land to another river. In a land like Britannia with thousands of rivers and streams, this allowed each of the sixty small armies attacking Britannia to have a mobile headquarters. This was forcing the Romans to send out more patrols than was wise, and thus allowed the Cubans to whittle down their light cavalry and scouts rather quickly.

            The Romans were in a massive dilemma. If they pulled enough forces together to attack and beat one of the Cuban armies, that Cuban army was able to retreat, after harassing them with their cavalry archers. If the army was too small, then the Cubans were able to mobilize faster and wipe out the army that came after them. Although the Cubans were avoiding killing the civilians, that was only because those civilians were future workers and slaves.

            At least the plan was to avoid killing them until he found out that the Romans now had the fast fire bows. The fast fire bows were not the only advantage that the Cubans had over the Romans but they were one of the biggest. Since that advantage would be gone in a matter of months, Guama had no choice but to begin taking land. The reason was simple. If the Cubans only had to fight the forces on Britannia, the war would already be over and the Cubans would have a new huge island under their control. Unfortunately, Britannia was only a small part of a massive empire that would send a much larger army to wipe them out sooner or later. Guama needed a large portion of Britannia to be under his control before that new army came, and Guama needed the fortresses to be either under his control or destroyed.

            That said, the fortresses were not the most important pieces of land for Guama’s tactics. Coastal towns and villages were. Ever since he received word about the fast fire bows, he had been going to costal town after coastal town and demanding their surrender. Without walls they had no choice but to surrender. At each town he left his men behind to begin building fortifications to repel the Roman reinforcements when they came. In fact Guama had waited for one of the towns to rebel before he tried to siege a walled town, and one of them graciously complied. Guama looked back at the miserable captives and smiled before turning his face back to the walled town.

            When they were nearly a thousand feet out Guama sent a Hibernian messenger toward the city on horseback, dragging a ‘present’ that wept as it was pulled.

            When the messenger reached the rather short walls he yelled out, “I BRING A MESSAGE FROM LANDOWNER GUAMA! IT IS MEANT FOR YOUR TOWN'S MAYOR!”

            One of the guards, who was clearly malnourished, replied back, “I WILL GO GET HIM!”

            The messenger waited and the guards pointed and talked about the messenger’s ‘present’.

            When the Mayor arrived, he respectfully asked, “What do you want?”

Violence starts

            “I was told to give you a present.” The messenger got off his horse and forced the present to roll over so that he was on his back. “This is the mayor of the town that decided to rebel against Guama.” Then he pointed at the ‘clothes’ the present was in and said, “We wrapped him in the skins of his wife, two daughters, and son.” Then he pointed at the present’s chest, and said, “We even cut off their faces and put them on his chest so that he can see his family every time he looks down.”

            The Mayor said, “That’s horrible.”

            “No, what was horrible was listening to the screams of this man's family as Guama personally skinned his wife and children alive in front of him. Guama actually removed his eyelids before he skinned his family alive so he would be forced to watch. Guama actually brought his wife and baby son out to watch as he did it. As he skinned the family alive, he prayed to several of his people's gods.”

            “Why are you with that devil worshipper? You are from Hibernia, you know the truth of the Universal Church.”

            “The Universal Church’s teaching on God and their teaching on Rome are two very different things. When the Cubans came, we had a choice to make. We could either be faithful allies to Rome, a nation that only remembers us long enough to tax us, or switch allegiances to Cuba, which began building water-powered workshops in every village with a river or stream immediately. Every few years, the Romans would send a governor from the continent to rule over our people, take our money, sons for their army, and daughters for their beds. The Cubans have given our elders positions of authority in their government. Why should we betray the Cubans? They made us their equals, while the Romans kept us under their boot heel.”

            “What about God?”

            “The Cubans don’t care what God we serve. They are even open to converting. Guama even prays to Jesus among his other gods.”

            “But there is only one God.”

            “I agree, but you are making a conversation about politics, allegiance, and your lives, into a conversation about religion. Hibernia does not reject the Universal Church, we reject Rome.”

            “But Rome protects the Universal Church and all its members.”

            “Rome did not protect this man, his family, his town, or Britannia. How many people have died over the last year due to the famine caused by Rome’s inability to fight the Cubans? Rome will not protect you or your people if you do not surrender before nightfall. When I am gone, collect this man, or don’t, just know this, you have until tonight, or what happened to this man will happen to you.” Then the messenger turned to the guards and said, “If your mayor does not surrender tonight you would do well to execute your mayor before morning and surrender or every woman and child in this town will be skinned alive in front of you before you are maimed and sent out to wander the island in the hopes that other walled towns won’t make the same mistake.” With his message given, the messenger got back on his horse and rode back.

            Minutes later, the guards went out, put the tortured Mayor on a pull sled, and brought him into the gates of the town. The tortured Mayor wept the entire way, and the guards realized he wasn’t speaking or yelling because his tongue and voice box had been cut out.

            Once they were inside the safety of the gates, the Mayor of the town asked the guards, “Why does he stink so badly?”

            “It has to be the skins he is wrapped in. They are not treated like leather; they must be rotting.”

            “Cut it off him then.”

            And so the guards took out their belt knives and began cutting, but it wasn’t long before they stopped, and one said, “Their rot has spread to his body. The worms that were eating the dead skin of his family are eating him.” One of the guards threw up after he saw the worms wiggling under the dying flesh of the man.

            The Mayor said, “Go get the priest. We need to ask him if it's okay to put this man out of his misery.”

            As someone left to get the town priest, one of the guards yelled out, “The Cubans are attacking.”

            The Mayor ran to the top of the gate while wondering why the Cubans would attack after giving that message. He didn’t say anything as the Cubans drew near with a rather small trebuchet and lots of children. The Mayor wondered why they were bringing children forward, and the only thing he could imagine was that the barbarians were going to use them as human shields, but the reality was much worse. The Cubans took one child, brought him to about three hundred and fifty feet from the gate, and began skinning the child alive. The screams of the child shook the heart of the walled town. When the screams stopped, the torturer cut the body into pieces, and once the butchering was finished, he put the pieces in the small trebuchet and launched the dismembered body into the town. Head, hands, arms, legs, and torso flew into the town and bounced around as a grim reminder of what awaited the town if they did not surrender.


Violence ends

            One hour, and five children later, the town waved a flag of surrender. Better to be crucified as traitors than have that happen to their families. They would have surrendered sooner but every leader in the town had to be on the same page. That included the mayor, the manager of the mine, two nobles, the guard captain, and the priest. Nobody wanted a last minute betrayal that would lead to the slow torturous deaths of their families.

            Once the city had surrendered, Guama provided the city with enough grain for two weeks of meals. It was a shocking gesture since it was never mentioned before. It wasn’t much, but it was far more than the Romans had provided, and it bought Guama some loyalty. Guama was no fool, he had read some of John’s writtings and he believed in bringing the biggest stick and carrot. In this case it meant starving the Britannians for a yearso he could offer more than Rome, and his offer was magnified by the fact he gave them food unexpectantly. Guama was here for the land and for the people, for what good was land if there was no one to work it.



Authors note- Up till now guama has not been in a position to be really really violent, and achieve his goals. Now that he is, you will see the totonac influence on him. Remember in part one where trevor and his men were capturing totonac women and making them their wives. Some of their influence is going to be seen on the violence Guama and the cubans show. Violence is not all encompassing for the cubans, but where it is needed they are as violent as possible.