A safe-looking cove with a narrow mouth and sheer walls. The eleven ships file in, glad of the shelter, and the men sing as they disembark. Then the cliff-rim fills with shapes. Shoulders wider than a sail is tall. Loose rock crumbles under their feet. The first boulder is thrown casually, almost absent-minded, and a ship folds in half. After that the giants get to work. They stroll down to the waterline carrying spears longer than any mast. They wade in among the wreckage and harpoon the men in the water, lifting some of them still alive and screaming, and they stack the bodies on the shore in tidy piles. Patient as fishermen. There is no battle in it. There is no fight. Five hundred men die in a harbour because the harbour was beautiful and the giants were home. Odysseus alone, who would not enter the cove, cuts his hawser and runs. Eleven ships and the men inside them are gone.
The Laestrygonians
Man-eating giants on a cliff-ringed harbour. They throw boulders at the ships below and spear the swimmers like fishermen working a pool.