So speaking he drew the sharp sword that hung long and heavy at his side, gathered himself, and swooped like a high-flying eagle which darts down to the plain through the dark clouds to snatch up a baby lamb or a cowering hare. So Hektor swooped to attack, flourishing his sharp sword. And Achilleus charged against him, his heart filled with savage fury. In front of his chest he held the covering of his lovely decorated shield, and the bright four-bossed helmet nodded on his head, with the beautiful golden hairs that Hephaistos had set thick along the crest shimmering round it. Like the Evening Star on its path among the stars in the darkness of the night, the loveliest star set in the sky, such was the light gleaming from the point of the sharp spear Achilleus held quivering in his right hand, as he purposed death for godlike Hektor, looking over his fine body to find the most vulnerable place. All the rest of his body was covered by his bronze armour, the fine armour he had stripped from mighty Patroklos when he killed him. But flesh showed where the collar-bones hold the join of neck and shoulders, at the gullet, where a man’s life is most quickly destroyed. Godlike Achilleus drove in there with his spear as Hektor charged him, and the point went right through his soft neck: but the ash spear with its weight of bronze did not cut the windpipe, so that Hektor could still speak and answer Achilleus. He crashed in the dust, and godlike Achilleus triumphed over him: ‘Hektor, doubtless as you killed Patroklos you thought you would be safe, and you had no fear of me, as I was far away. You fool – behind him there was I left to avenge him, a far greater man than he, waiting there by the hollow ships, and I have collapsed your strength. Now the dogs and birds will maul you hideously, while the Achaians will give Patroklos full burial.’

Then with the strength low in him Hektor of the glinting helmet answered: ‘I beseech you by your life and knees and by your parents, do not let the dogs of the Achaian camp eat me by the ships, but take the ransom of bronze and gold in plenty that my father and honoured mother will offer you, and give my body back to my home, so that the Trojans and the wives of the Trojans can give me in death my due rite of burning.’