by John Dolan
Akilles is in throwing range now. Hektor thinks, “If I can kill Akilles, the widows will forgive me. Polydamus will forgive me.”
Then he looks at Akilles and realizes he doesn’t have a chance in single combat.
So he thinks, “What if I slid off my shield, dropped my spear, took off my helmet, walked up to him unarmed, and offered to make a deal? I’ll offer half our wealth, plus Helen and everything Paris brought from Sparta.”
Akilles is close now, holding his spear low for a belly stab.
Hektor thinks desperately, “I could make every man in Troy swear to give Akilles half their wealth!”
Akilles is only a few paces off now.
Hektor realizes, “I’m talking nonsense! He won’t make a deal, he wants my life!”
His courage fails; he turns and runs.
Akilles follows, watching the angles so he can cut Hektor off if he breaks for the town gates.
Hektor runs well, for a man in full armor. Not as fast as Akilles, of course. Hektor is only human; Akilles is more than half god. It’s no contest.
They run over the fields where men have been killing each other for nine long years. They run past the fig tree where so many men have died, and on, past the two springs, the source of the river Yellow. One spring flows cold, the other hot; even on a warm day like this you can see the steam-cloud rising from it. Hektor vanishes for a moment in the mist, but Akilles runs through it and spots him just ahead.
They run on, over the flat rocks by the pool. Once, Trojan women and girls brought their washing down to these rocks. They’d sing happy songs as they beat clothes clean against them. It’s been a long time since anyone sang those songs.
Akilles chases Hektor around the walls for two long laps, as Priam and Hekuba scream and tear their hair, begging Hektor to come inside. It’s too late for that now; they know it, but they can’t stop.
Akilles is enjoying the game. He’s in no hurry.
As the two of them start their third lap, he’s smiling, barely sweating. Hektor is breathing through his mouth and he can hardly lift his feet. It won’t be long now.
Zeus shakes his head and grumbles, “I hate to watch this. Hektor never missed a sacrifice to me, or any of us. He did everything a man is supposed to do. Now we leave him to go against Akilles alone? That’s not even a fair fight.”
Hera and Athena scowl. They expected him to weaken like this.
He goes on, “You know, I’ve got half a mind to save Hektor! Why not?”
He looks around for support, but none of the other gods say anything. No one wants to offend Hera and her daughter.
He suggests, “Why don’t we see what the scales have to say? Find out where the balance lies? Athena turns to him, fuming: “Father, you know yourself Hektor’s death was decided long ago. We’ve been over this a million times. But go ahead! Do whatever you want! Just as long as you’re ready for the consequences!”
He sighs, “Yes, you’re right, daughter. I was only wondering … but you’re right. I give you free rein. Go down there and meddle to your heart’s content.”
Athena swoops down on Hektor and Akilles. Akilles is matching Hektor turn for turn, as a falcon mirrors every swerve of the dove it’s chasing.
He’s herded Hektor away from Troy, out onto the plain. The rest of the Greeks have come up, so Hektor is within spear-throw of many Greek warriors. A few raise their spears, but Akilles roars, “No one touches him! His death belongs to me!”
Apollo has been lending Hektor a bit of strength, but he’s tired of wasting energy on a doomed human. As the two warriors run past the hot and cold springs for the fourth time, Apollo is deciding when to pull the plug and let Hektor fend for himself.
Now that Athena’s gone, Zeus brings out the scales to see if he can get the others to call off Hektor’s death. He doesn’t have much hope, but it’s worth a try.
He lifts the two golden pans, showing all the gods that the balance is true. Then he takes a grain of sand and puts it in one pan, grunting, “That’s Hektor,” and another in the other, saying, “And that’s Akilles.”
He lets go, hoping that Hektor’s pan will rise. If it does, he can intervene.
Hektor’s pan falls all the way down to Hades, into those monstrous abscesses under the earth.
Apollo shrugs and disengages; Hektor stumbles, more tired than he’s ever been in his life.
Zeus sighs and puts away the scales. All he can do now is watch the poor man die.
Athena flutters to Akilles’ ear, eager to help with the kill. She’s giddy with the thrill of this hunt, stroking Akilles’ arm, whispering hoarsely, “Brave Akilles, your triumph is almost here! Rest a moment, my champion! Rest and get your breath, while I trick Hektor into fighting you.”
Athena assumes the shape of Hektor’s bravest brother, Deiphobus. She loves these games, and throws herself into the role, striding toward Hektor and saying in Deiphobus’ voice, “Brother, I see you’re having a hard time. I’ll stand with you. If the two of us stick together, we can kill Akilles.”
Hektor sobs with relief, “Deiphobus, you’ve always been my favorite brother! But after this I’ll do anything for you! No one else has the courage to come out and help me! They just look down from the walls and leave me on my own!”
Athena can hardly hide her laughter. She says in Deiphobus’ voice, “Oh, they begged me not to come out and help you, but I couldn’t stand to see you face this Greek by yourself. Together, brother, we’re invincible, just the two of us!”
Hektor clasps his brother’s shoulder, weeping with relief, and calls to Akilles, “I won’t run from you any farther, Greek! My brother and I will face you together!” Akilles smirks. He knows who that brother really is.
Hektor holds up a hand: “Let’s agree on terms first. If I win, I’ll treat your body with respect. No mutilation. And if you win, you treat my corpse with respect.”
Akilles says coldly, “You’re a fool, Hektor. Athena has fooled you to your death.”
Hektor shrugs, “If I die, I die. But let’s agree to treat the loser’s body respectfully.”
“You’re dead already, Hektor. You’ll die a fool. No terms.”
Hektor tries again, “Who knows which of us will die? You would want your body treated properly, just as I do.”
Akilles screams, “That’s my armor you’re wearing! You tore it off Patroklas’ body! No terms! I’ll drag your carcass through the dust, that’s a promise I’ll make freely.”
He hefts his spear up on his shoulder and goes into his run, yelling, “But first there’s the little matter of killing you!”
He throws. Hektor sees it coming and ducks. The spear buries itself in the ground and Hektor feels something like hope.
He circles, taunting, “You missed me! How could that happen, O great hero? Perhaps you’re just an ordinary man! We can make a deal, end the war, once you’re dead!”
He throws on the word “dead.” A good throw! It hits Akilles’ shield dead center. The shield-face writhes with the impact, but absorbs the blow. The spear falls harmlessly, as if spat out by Hefestos’ wondrous gift.
Akilles has his spear back. Hektor sees it but can’t believe it. He saw that spear fly far over his head, and now it’s back in the Greek’s hand? It’s impossible!
He doesn’t know that Athena, feeling playful, wanting to take part in this deadly game, has pulled Akilles’ spear out of the ground and brought it back to him.
Hektor has no spear, so he turns to ask Deiphobus for one. And there is no Deiphobus. There’s no one with him. That’s when he realizes two things: Athena has been playing one of her pranks, and he is a dead man.
He draws his only weapon, the sword, and says, “This is the end, then. But I won’t die groveling or trying to run away. His spear will hit me in the chest, not the back.”
And he leaps, sword high.
Akilles leaps at the same moment, his helmet burning like a comet. His spear flashes as he aims. He knows that armor Hektor�
��s wearing; it used to be his. The one vulnerable spot in it is the neck, between helmet and breastplate.
He stabs. Hektor falls, his neck gashed wide open. The blood is pulsing out where the big vein has been cut.
Akilles stands over him gloating, “That armor didn’t save Patroklas, and it didn’t save you. But Patroklas had a friend to avenge him. Who’ll avenge you? Your people left you to die alone out here.”
He watches Hektor die, pulse by pulse. He talks to the dying man quickly; there’s so much to say: “I’m going to give Patroklas a fine funeral by the ships—but you, you’ll be food for dogs, for buzzards! For the worms!”
Hektor whispers, “Akilles, I beg you—I’d clasp your knees if I could get up—please, return my body, take a ransom for it, so my poor parents can burn me properly.
Akilles kicks him, gloating, “Begging, ransom! I’ll give you better than that; I’ll give you dogs, buzzards, worms!”’
Hektor lies on his back and stares at the sky, whispering, “I knew it was no use asking you for pity.”
He says in a voice suddenly clear and loud, “Paris and Apollo will kill you right over there, by the main gate.”
Then he dies. We say a man falls because that’s what happens. As long as he lives, his body holds his soul inside. When he dies, the soul pours out like water and starts its long fall, down through the grass, then the dirt, then the rocks and caves. It falls for a long time until it lands in Hades. And as it falls it moans, grieving for all it has lost, the sun and women and strength, all the joy of having a body.
Akilles sees Hektor’s dead eyes staring at the sky. He plants a foot on the torso and yanks his spear out, muttering, “I don’t care where they kill me or how, at least I got you first.”
He tears the armor off: “I’ll take what they have in mind for me! I don’t care!”
The Greeks have gathered around, taunting the dead man—cautiously at first, then talking more boldly: “He’s not as big as I thought he’d be!” Finally one of them works up the nerve to jam his spear right through Hektor’s belly.
The rest of them rush in like a pack of dogs. The spears rise and fall over Hektor’s corpse like harvesters threshing grain.
When they’ve hacked up the body sufficiently, they kick, piss on it, spit on it, making up jokes: “Hektor, my prince! Wake up! You’ve got some dirt on your lovely face! Excuse me, Prince, someone is pissing on your wounds!”
Some of the men ask Akilles, “Lord, shouldn’t we storm the town? Listen to them wailing for their dead princeling! They’ll be easy pickings!”
He stares hard at the man and says, “While Patroklas lies unburied? Not while I’m alive. If you attack, it’ll be over my dead body.”
The man stutters, “Yes, lord, of course; I only—”
Akilles shakes his head bitterly, “Men forget the dead before they’re even cold. It’ll be the same with me. I know you people. But as long as I’m alive, we’ll show a little respect. I’ll show Patroklas this corpse, so he knows he’s been avenged.”
He takes out his sword and jabs it through Hektor’s heels, then takes a leather thong and pushes it through the holes. He loops the thong to the back of his chariot.
Then he tosses the armor that both Patroklas and Hektor died wearing into the car and shakes the reins. The god-horses break into a slow canter. He’s in no hurry. He wants the Trojans on the walls to get a good long look at Hektor’s naked, mutilated corpse bouncing along in the dust. He drives slowly along the walls, enjoying the cries of horror.
When he’s heard enough of their weeping and screams, he wheels off toward the Greek camp, Hektor’s body flying up as it strikes each tussock.
Hekuba moans as she watches her son’s body abused. She rips off her veil, tearing her cheeks with her fingernails, pulling hunks of hair from her head.
Priam runs down to the gates, trying to open them himself so he can take his son’s body from the Greeks. The soldiers at the gate have to hold him back. He beats weakly at their shoulders, groaning, “Let me go! I’ll offer Akilles anything he wants! He’ll have pity on me!”
The soldiers know better; they pull the old man away from the gates.
Priam falls on his knees and rolls in the mud and dung moaning, “So many of my sons have died, but none of those deaths hurt like this one!”
They lift him out of the mud and dung, weeping with him.
He moans, “Hektor dead means we’re all dead! No, worse than dead! My daughters will be sold! My grandsons will slave in the fields! Dead or sold, sold or dead!”
They weep with him. They all know it’s true.
Hekuba sings over the wall, to the plain where her son’s body was defiled, “Hektor, you were the city! Your death is our death, but your death hurts more than ours! You walked through our streets like a god, but a god can’t die! Your death is our death!”
Hektor’s wondrous wife, Andromakhe, finest of women, has been weaving in her room, tracing a pattern of flowers onto the cloth. A slave girl comes in and Andromakhe tells her, “Go heat some water for my husband’s bath. He’ll be all hot and sweaty when he comes home from fighting those Greeks!”
The girl bows and goes for a cauldron.
At that moment Andromakhe hears a roar of grief. She knows in a moment what it means, and stumbles over the loom, calls to her women, “Come with me now!”
They veil themselves, wrap up properly, and run into the street. As they run toward the walls, Andromakhe moans, “There’s only one man they’d cry like that for! Oh, he was always too brave! He stayed out on the plain too long this time!”
She stumbles, and her women pull her up. She staggers on, moaning, “Please, gods, kill me now, before I have to hear this news! Kill me before I see my son killed, before they sell me as a bed slave—” She shrieks, and they lift her by the arms, leading her onward, crying, “You were always too brave, Hektor! I warned you to fight from the walls!”
They’ve reached the walls. She shrugs off her women and runs up to look out onto the plain, just in time to see the naked corpse being dragged through the dust behind Akilles’ chariot.
She faints. Her women pick her up, stand her against the wall. She practices breathing again, steadies herself. She has a duty, a widow’s duty, no matter how she feels. She takes a deep breath and chants, “Nothing but grief, for both of us, forever! You were born in these walls, unlucky! And I in Thebes, unlucky! Eetyon had seven sons, but all unlucky! I grew up in the shadow of a dark mountain; you are falling through dark rocks! You will fall, fall, all the way to Hades, darkest place of all! And you are still the lucky one; I’m left alive, with a son I love! A curse, this love! I’ll suffer for that love as I watch him beg from his father’s friends! Cuffed away from the table, fighting with the dogs for scraps. But only if he lives, if he is unlucky! His father’s friend, deep in his wine, may feel a moment’s pity and give the boy a sip, but he’ll get the back of a man’s hand if he drinks enough to wet his palate. ‘Get out, beggar,’ they say, ‘Run with the dogs, orphan! You’re no kin to us!’”
She takes a breath and sings again, for her son, to make them promise: “He’ll take a scrap of bread and wander out to sleep in the cow sheds, the boy you all called ‘Little Lord’! The boy you used to love to spoil, who slept every night in the arms of his nurse, who lived to play and sleep when play had wearied him!”
She turns again, toward the shore where the Greek ships are beached, and cries, “Hektor, you were the walls of the city, and it dies with you! The writhing worms will have what’s left of you, when the dogs have torn the meat from your bones. The Greeks will look on your body unclothed, though you have rooms full of fine robes in our quarters. I’ll burn your robes, then, husband! I go now to burn them, since we can never have your body to burn! We can never bury you, all of us who loved you, men and women, old, young, all!”
The women moan quietly while she sings. When she finishes, their moan rises to a wail that goes on and on, all night.
; 23
GAMES
AKILLES DRIVES BACK to the camp with Hektor’s body bumping along behind his chariot. He drives around Patroklas’ body for hours. His men are tired, but he keeps them marching after him. All the other Greeks are drinking wine in their tents, but Akilles’ men stir up the dust all afternoon, doing laps around the corpse.
At last he waves the men to a stop, unties Hektor’s body, and drags it over to the bier. He puts a huge hand on Patroklas’ chest and says, “My friend, I did as I promised. Here’s Hektor, you see? I took him down and brought him here face down in the dust. The camp dogs will gulp his meat, while you get a fine funeral. There’ll be twelve Trojans, noble-born, sacrificed at your funeral pyre.”
The men go off to their tents to clean up for the funeral feast. It’s a fine meal. Akilles has gone all-out. Oxen, sheep, even a big boar get their throats sliced in front of Patroklas’ body. Then the slaves carry the kicking, dying beasts around his bier until all their blood has flowed out.
They’re cut up and roasted on spits. The men can smell roast boar, roast ox; they’re drooling in spite of themselves. It’s not that they don’t grieve for Patroklas, but they can’t match Akilles’ grief.
They can’t even get him to wash up and go to the feast. He just shakes his head, repeating, “No water touches me until Patroklas has been burned properly. The rest of you, go eat and drink; I’m waiting for dawn, when we light the pyre.”
Everyone goes off to stuff themselves. They can’t resist all that free meat, and there’ll be wine too, not just for the lords, either.
Akilles doesn’t take even a sip of water, just paces back and forth along the beach, finally lying down on the sand.
He wakes to find Patroklas standing by him. The dead man sighs, “You’ve forgotten me already? Burn my body then, so I can cross the river. The dead won’t let me in the ferry until my body is burned. I never thought it would be so hard to get into Hades’ country.”
