The tearing of a dust-sheet isn’t an obvious sound to describe the dis-scabbarding of a Greek sword, and then Logue renders it even more striking by adding that singularly English ‘shire-sized’.  Be good to see ‘shire-sized’ occasionally displace ‘humungous’ and other commonly used large words.

See also the bestellar reviews, complete with rich quote-mosaics, of Adam Nicolson’s magnificent Why Homer Matters and Logue’s War Music, a muscular rendition of several books of the Iliad. 

‘Then at the Wall, then into Heaven, and drew his sword.

And as he drew, Greece drew.

And this dis-scabbarding was heard in Troy

Much like a shire-sized dust-sheet torn in half.’

Source: Christopher Logue, War Music: An account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer’s Iliad, London: Faber and Faber, 2001, p. 88