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.