Chapter 49 - The River’s Edge

The Hebrus did not shimmer that morning; it lay black and still beneath a lid of low, bruised cloud. Along its banks, the mud gleamed with the sweat of hundreds of men laboring through the night. Constantine's engineers had worked in silence, muffling their hammers and lashing ropes to stakes driven deep into the riverbed. Every man moved as if the sun would never rise again unless the bridge was finished.