Chapter XX: The Siege of Antioch
Quintus stared out from the walls of Antioch, thinking back at how he and his legion got here in the first place. Everyone had known the Parthians were going to invade, yet somehow, the invasion had still caught them off guard. Quintus himself, having never faced the Parthians before, was surprised at the speed with which they had invaded. The VII legion, which had been stationed in Palestine since the civil war, was simply swept aside, carrying Quintus along with it. He remembered the hopelessness he and his comrades had felt as they stood huddled in their tightly packed testudo with arrows reigning down on them from afar, seemingly at will.
The testudo had proven to be effective thus far, and since he was alive, Quintus had few complaints. In Antioch though, Quintus felt a completely different type of helplessness. They were all huddled in a nice fortress sure, but Quintus and the rest of the men became dejected as the Parthians seemed content to siege them out. There was nothing they could really do about it. Sallying from the city had proved to be ineffective after it became clear the Parthians were too numerous to be pushed away by force. As they slowly starved, the Romans (to say nothing of the poor residents of the city) only hope lie in a relieving force. As time went by and there was no sign of any relieving force arriving anytime soon , Quintus began to feel like they were abandoned, and he was going to end up dead, not by the sword, but through his deprived stomach. It was a sense of complete helplessness, and many had already began to accept their fate.
Quintus had not gone that far yet, but by the time word was smuggled in that Bassus had won a great victory and was on his way to relieve them this very second, he was very close to giving up all hope. The news was greeted with joy, and a renewed sense of determination gripped the troops. It was the kind one might expect from a dying stray cat that had been taken in by a sympathetic family. Maybe they weren’t destined to die just yet after all.
Quintus snapped out of his day dream immediately when the sounds of trumpets and war horns from both his own and the enemies camp nearly blew out his eardrums. A shout from the watchman next to him on the wall including the words “Parthia...attack...and oh shit!” (that was all he understood from it) told him all he needed to know. The Parthians were going to try and storm the city by force before the relieving force arrived. Suddenly alert and ready, Quintus moved in with the rest of his century on to prepare to repel the assault on their portion of the wall.
He took up his position next to the tall and burly Lucius, and watched as the Parthians moved up with ladders under the cover of volley after volley of missiles. He heard Gallus frantically shout, “Get the ladders! Get the ladders!” and at that moment he saw the wooden ladders slam against the top of the wall. A pushing match ensued, as the Romans tried to tip the ladders over, while equally determined Parthian soldiers attempted to keep it up while their brave comrades climbed to the top and onto the wall. It was a battle the Romans were losing, and Quintus and Lucius soon had to abandon their part in the pushing match and dispatch the two men who appeared right in front of them screaming like hyenas with maces and swords raised.
Soon more and more wild men screaming like hyenas began to appear, and they were hardly able to kill one before another popped right in the dead man’s place. Quintus had the bright idea of pushing one of the dead man off the side and onto the unsuspecting soldiers climbing the ladder, knocking them all off and giving him some brief respite. Along with Lucius, he took the moment to finally topple the ladder. All around him, the Parthian assault seemed to be slowing down, until at last, the attack seemed to have been called off. The carnage was immense, and Quintus stood gaping as his own century was a shell of its former self. Among the dead was the strict but brave centurion Gallus. Although he hated him as a raw recruit (what recruit doesn’t hate their centurion?), Quintus had grown to like the man, who he soon discovered was the bravest man in the entire legion.
Tears welled up in his eyes at the site of Gallus’s lifeless body lying limp on the ground. By the looks of it, the centurion lived up to his reputation as the bravest man in the legion, and Quintus counted over 10 stab wounds all across his body. At the very least, he had not gone down easily, as the stab wounds, as well as the litter of enemy bodies strewn around him, clearly showed. The rest of the century, which had also grown to respect their centurion as well, made sure to give him a proper burial and funeral worthy of a brave Roman soldier. The next day, Quintus learned that he, among all people, was promoted to replace Gallus as centurion.