Dawn of a New Rome

Constantine's vanguard spilled out of the oak hills at noon, banners nodding above the long columns, steel rippling in the summer haze. When the emperor reined in at the last rise, the city revealed itself: not the crude wedge sketched by nervous spies, but a fortress of myth-Byzantium crouched at the world's edge, three faces pressed to the sea, the landward side bristling with wall and tower. The city's flanks were granite, its ramparts older than memory. No army could hope to storm it in a day. Yet as he gazed, Constantine felt only the calm chill of problem-solving, a commander's pride at meeting a worthy adversary.

His orders dropped like stones in a pond: surveyors fanned out with pace-wheels and plumb lines, mapping every ditch and promontory; axemen felled whole stands of oak and beech, while wagon trains delivered stone from nearby quarries. Legionary carpenters set up sawpits and scaffolds by the hour, turning the army's edge into a mobile workshop. By dusk, the first belt of earthworks stretched in a ragged crescent, palisade rising from the dust behind a ditch deep enough to swallow horse and man. Constantine walked the ring as the sun bled into the Bosphorus, face closed, taking in every flaw and strength in the siege line. Where the ground sloped, he ordered the towers doubled in height; where the bedrock broke the surface, he marked the site for sappers and powder charges.

Vitruvius, his Syrian engineer, hurried at his elbow, jotting notes in wax. "These heights will bear only the lightest towers," he warned, tracing the survey with a stylus. "The larger ones risk collapse if the spring rains come."

Constantine nodded. "We want the enemy watching the towers, not the mines. Put your best men to digging beneath the land wall. If Licinius dares a sortie, the trench will swallow him. The rest is spectacle."

Torchlight leapt across the camps as his staff hurried to transmit the plan. Constantine's cavalry patrolled the night perimeter, cutting down any who tried to slip in or out. Grain carts entering the city vanished after a final desperate dash; no supplies escaped the blockade. Every hour that passed tightened the noose.

Yet the siege alone would not decide the war. Even as he circled the city, Constantine's thoughts stretched east, following the moonlit water to the strait where his eldest son hunted for glory. There, the fate of Byzantium and the empire would hinge on one brutal question: could a battered, outnumbered fleet close the last artery and cut Licinius off from rescue?

The Aquila, flagship of Crispus, rolled quietly at anchor among the northbound current, her battered hull caulked and patched after days of combat. Crispus, lean and restless, paced the decks beneath the torn silk of his standard, speaking with his wounded, checking the lashings of each scorpion and bolt-thrower. The sea still stank of pitch and burning wood. He gathered his officers at dawn beneath a sail stretched for shade, laying out the night's losses in blunt words.

"Amandus has lost fifteen hulls sunk, four burned, half his triremes crippled," Crispus said, voice quiet but carrying. "His captains are scattered, his signals confused. He has anchored his survivors in the southern channel, banking on our exhaustion. That is his error. We are not exhausted-only impatient."

A murmur of agreement ran through the officers, though their faces bore the grey mask of men who had slept little and bled much. Servilius, his second, limped forward, helmet in hand. "Our cutters are fast, Caesar, but your marines are thin. The men need rest, water, and stitches more than another fight."

Crispus turned to him with a faint smile. "The enemy needs none of those. They only need fear." He traced the channel's narrowest choke on his chart, pointing to the line of empty supply barges he'd ordered lashed together in the night. "They expect another duel of weight and numbers. Instead, they find a barricade. Our lightest ships harry their flanks, then slip away. If they attempt to form up and force a passage, our archers and machines cut them to ribbons. If they hold back, we shadow and strike at night, setting hulls ablaze while their crews cannot see."

He let the plan sink in, then dismissed them to their crews. The sun climbed higher, glinting on a thousand shields as the ships unmoored. Oars dipped; Chi-Rho banners fluttered at the mastheads. The western fleet, patchwork but defiant, slid into the bottleneck with the current at its back.

Amandus did as Crispus predicted, pushing his largest triremes forward, oars lashing the water to froth. The barges blocked the main channel; the enemy faltered, tried to ram or burn a passage, and instantly became entangled, bows overlapping, hulls crunching against wood and iron cable. Crispus waited only a heartbeat, then dropped his signal banner. Three liburnians swung out from cover, slamming their rams into the lead Licinian ships. The impact shattered decks, threw oarsmen overboard, and left the channel clogged with wreckage.

Amandus's formation wavered. His captains tried to turn, but the water was too narrow and confusion too thick. Crispus's archers launched flaming arrows into the congested mass; ballista bolts whistled from the barges, punching through timber and flesh alike. Fire spread from ship to ship, and the Licinian crews, already panicked, struggled to break free. Behind the chaos, the western marines closed in, grappling lines flying, swords and axes flashing in the morning glare.

From the cliffs, Constantine's scouts could see the smoke boiling up from the straits. The sound of rams meeting hull, the crackle of burning canvas, and the distant screams drifted to the land walls like thunder from a distant storm. In Byzantium's forum, Licinius listened for news with ears tuned to the wind, but no runner brought relief-only the slow mounting certainty of disaster.

Back on the water, the trap tightened. Crispus, never at the center but always present at the edges, directed his ships like a surgeon guiding a blade: strike, withdraw, flank, withdraw, never letting the enemy regroup. As the hours passed, the advantage swung irrevocably to the invaders. By noon, Amandus's fleet was little more than a chain of burning hulks and scattered survivors limping for the open sea. The channel was his no longer.

When the last Licinian standard dipped beneath the waves, Crispus allowed the survivors to flee. He had no need to butcher men who could not escape. Instead, he turned his battered ships north, sealing the Bosphorus against any hope of rescue for the city.

On shore, Constantine watched the billowing black smoke and let himself smile for the first time in months. Byzantium was encircled by land and sea. The ring had closed.

Orders followed at once: the siege lines thickened, towers grew a story higher, new engines were dragged into place. Grain stores were rationed; every escape route was closed. Constantine rode through the ranks at sunset, pausing at the gates to address his legions.

"The hardest stone breaks to the patient hammer," he said, voice carrying over the ranks. "You have driven the last wedge between East and West. You will finish this city, then take your reward."

The men cheered, weary but hungry for the end. Crispus's victory had sharpened their resolve as much as it had shattered the hope of the enemy.

Night fell over Byzantium. Torches burned along the walls; the defenders waited for sorties that would never come. In his command tent, Licinius reviewed his options with growing dread, watching the city's grain supplies shrink and the river darken with the corpses of the dead. He could hope only for a miracle or an assassin's lucky blade. None would come.

Across the plain, Constantine studied maps and reports late into the night. Every calculation now ended at the same conclusion: the city would fall. The empire would be one. He walked out into the chill and looked at the stars reflected on the Bosphorus, knowing that history itself was waiting for his signal.

In the straits, Crispus's fleet kept vigil, oars ready, firepots stacked, waiting for the order that would finally break the world in two.

The siege had become a question of time. But for the first time since Rome's birth, the answer was certain.