The Sava was swollen with snowmelt when Constantine's column arrived at Sirmium. Boots squelched through mud and thawing slush, their passage marked by the scars of broken siege engines and heaps of ash still smoldering where Licinian bodies had been hurriedly burned. No crowds greeted them; the townsfolk watched from doorways, measuring the faces of conquerors who had bled too much to cheer. Constantine rode at the head, cloak sodden, face masked by exhaustion and intent.
He refused all requests to return west. The empire, he declared, had suffered its greatest wound here. If it was to heal, it must begin at the heart of the gash. The marble halls of Rome would not see him until the Danube frontier ran iron-bright and the provinces knew their master by more than rumor.
