Chapter 45 - The Plain of a Thousand Fires

Constantine rose before dawn on the day he would commit the West to battle. In the grey hush he stepped from his tent into the cool Pannonian air, the earth beneath his boots already trembling to the low percussion of legionary drums far down the line. To east and west the bivouacs of his host stretched in disciplined grids—leather roofs dark with dew, cook-smoke drifting in ribbons, sentinel fires guttering to embers. He felt no thrill, only the steady tightening of every sense, as though his mind were drawing a bowstring that had been notched for years.