The fleet came back into the bay at Aulis three hours before dusk, and the men on the beach counted the ships twice before they believed the number.
Fifteen thousand had sailed east. Fifteen thousand came home. No black smoke trailing behind them, no missing hulls limping in under half-sail. Whatever they had found out there, it hadn't cost them blood to find it.
But it had cost them something else. The men who came ashore moved with the particular heaviness of soldiers who had expected a fight and found silence instead, and who understood that silence from an enemy was worse than any battle. Silence meant the enemy had chosen where to be. Silence meant the enemy was somewhere else.
