Achilles Read Online Free PDF

Achilles would like to linger for a glimpse, but the men who press in push them back. They bundle their companions through. If only to die inside Troy’s walls.
    Priam orders them to close the great Scaean Gate before Achilles can reach it.
    QUICK!
    GET IN!
    The huge leaves of the gate are pushed together, the enormous bolts heaved into place. For a moment they breathe in relief. But they know the end has begun.
    Then someone says that Hector is still out there. The two of them. Out there.
    They needn’t have bothered to run. Achilles has no interest in any other Trojan now. He has just seen Hector from the plain – high on a boulder near the ramparts, in full view, surveying the land below.
    As if spears, boulders and axes could not be hurled.
    As if he were watching the sky for signs of weather.
    Achilles reaches the wall and sees Hector outside the gates, an easy spear’s flight away. They look at each other and, just for a moment, time stops, eyes blazing into eyes as each takes in the form and splendour of the other and thinks It’s him. Then Achilles raises the great ash spear and Hector begins to run and the race, which both always knew would one day begin, begins.
    Hector’s feet are sure. They know these tracks, where they’ll find scree, where the ground is firm. As he runs he remembers each part of his life: the bushes and rocks of his boyhood hideouts, the promontory he lay on one full night to learn the stars; the routes of his hunting, his cattle herding, the waterfall he led Andromache to when he wooed her. The stream of Astyanax’s first bathing. The shallow rock pools where the women did the laundry before the war. He remembers, his life spread out before him like a giant sheet in the sun, the way ahead narrowing to a tunnel which he runs down.
    The rhythm of their steps goes on for ever.
    It makes no difference that Achilles does not know the terrain so well. He is strong as a stag. Inexhaustible. Hector can gain no ground. Three times they circle the city. Now Hector scans the walls for armed comrades who might occupy Achilles while he scales the battlements and escapes; but Achilles never lets him get close to the walls.
    The Myrmidons press in. Stationed at various points in the circuit they follow Achilles as they can, keeping Hector running, blocking off his escapes. But if one of them raises a spear or a boulder Achilles glares him to a halt. No one will take this kill from him.
    Athene is back with him – lucid and swift and not at all out of breath. She tells him again that Hector is his and promises to make him stop. Then, looking like Deiphoebus, she catches up with Hector who takes heart, happy that his dear brother has risked his life to join him. Ready now, he stops in his tracks, and turns.
    Again Achilles’ eyes meet Hector’s. The Myrmidons stand back.
    Hector promises an honourable deal: the winner will treat the other’s body with respect and allow his people to fetch it for decent burial.
    Achilles looks at the man who killed Patroclus and feels the hatred spread through his body, slowly, luxuriously, like cream. A sumptuous hatred that leaves no part of him unfilled.
    â€˜No Hector. We meet as animals. What’s left of you will go to the dogs.’
    He lifts the great ash spear that even Patroclus could not hold. And throws.
    Hector ducks. The spear pierces the ground. Immediately, unseen by Hector, Athene tweaks it out and hands it back to Achilles.
    Now it is Hector’s throw. Achilles’ miss has cheered him. He casts his own great spear which lands, dead centre, in Achilles’ Olympic shield.
    But no god tweaks it out and he has no other spear.
    Deiphoebus is nowhere to be seen.
    Now he knows he has come to his death. He draws his huge sword and wields it with both hands.
    Achilles takes his sword too. After the day’s slaughter the divine blade still flashes like a sun. There is all the time he could ever want. He