Chapter 52 - The Narrow Sea

Constantine's vanguard came out of the wooded hills at noon, and the emperor reined in to regard Byzantium with a predator's stillness. It was nothing like the charcoal sketches his spies had smuggled across Thrace; the city crouched on its rocky spit like a mailed fist, three sheer faces washed by indigo water, the fourth barred by walls and towers older than myth. A lesser man might have felt despair. Constantine felt only professional respect—followed at once by the iron taste of determination. If Licinius believed stone and surf could save him, he had misread the nature of iron.