The beach at Aulis stretched for miles, a crescent of dark sand caught between the mountains and the sea. The bay beyond it was choked with ships—a thousand hulls, black and brown and weathered grey, their masts swaying in the winter wind like a forest stripped of leaves. The smoke of ten thousand cooking fires rose into the pale sky, and the noise of the camp rolled across the water in a constant, grinding roar: the clash of hammers on bronze, the shouts of men, the whinny of horses, the ceaseless rumble of an army waiting to be unleashed.
Agamemnon stood on a low rise above the beach, his cloak snapping in the wind, watching the latest arrivals drop anchor in the bay. Beside him, Menelaus was silent. He had been silent for most of the morning, staring at the ships with the hollow, burning eyes of a man who had been wronged and had not yet found his revenge.
