The news reached the camp three days after it happened.
A sailor brought it. He had been on one of the support vessels, had seen the smoke rising from the northern island as they sailed away. He had not known what it was at first. Then one of the soldiers had told him, and the telling had spread through the camp like fire through dry grass.
By the time the kings gathered in Agamemnon's tent, every man in the army knew what had happened. Three hundred dead. A fishing village burned to the ground. The High King's son had done it, and the High King had ordered it.
The tent was thick with tension as the kings took their places. No one spoke. No one needed to. The silence was louder than any argument.
Diomedes was the first to break it. He had not sat down. He stood near the tent's entrance, his arms crossed over his chest, his face hard as the bronze of his armour. "You burned a village. Three hundred people. And you did it without consulting us."
