Chapter 49 - Foundations Laid in Silence

Snowmelt swelled the Sava when Constantine's battered column tramped into Sirmium, boots squelching through thawing streets still gouged by siege engines. No triumphal arches greeted them, only wary townsfolk and the acrid reek of hastily burned corpses. Here, on the hinge of Pannonia, the emperor planted his field-throne and refused all calls to return west; the empire's new skin needed stitching before the wound could fester.