“Hector! Inside!”
His father’s voice came down from the wall. Hector kept his eyes on the plain.
The last of the Trojans were passing through the gates behind him. He could hear their stumbling feet, the men at the entrance urging them on. Farther away, a single figure was coming toward the city in armor that caught the light with every step.
Achilles had returned to the war.
Hector had killed his closest companion, Patroclus, and taken the armor he wore. Now that armor covered Hector’s own chest. Achilles had come wearing a new suit made by Hephaestus, and the Trojans had broken before him.
From above, Priam begged again. Hector’s mother joined him.
He could still go in. The gate stood open.
But he had kept the army outside when Polydamas urged retreat. Men had trusted him, and now their bodies lay between the city and the river. He imagined entering the streets beneath the eyes of their families.
For a moment he thought of laying down his weapons and offering to return Helen and the treasure Paris had brought to Troy. Then he looked at the man approaching and knew this meeting had passed beyond bargains over Helen.
Achilles came nearer.
Hector’s resolve broke. He turned and ran.
The Man Beside Him
They ran beneath the walls, past the watching towers and the springs where the women of Troy had washed their clothes before the Greeks came.
Hector could hear Achilles behind him. Whenever he tried to turn toward a gate, Achilles cut him off. The city was so close that Hector could see familiar stones, but he could not reach its shelter.
Once around. Then twice.
His breath rasped. The weight of the borrowed armor pulled at him.
After the third circuit, a voice called beside him.
“Brother. Stop. We can face him together.”
Deiphobus stood there with a spear.
Hector slowed. Of all the people behind the walls, one had come out to stand with him. Relief moved through him so fiercely that for a moment he could hardly speak.
“Stay close.”
He turned toward Achilles.
“Whichever of us falls,” Hector said, “let the other return his body.”
Achilles would make no promise.
His spear flew. Hector ducked, felt it pass, and heard it strike the ground behind him. He hurled his own. It struck Achilles’s shield and sprang away.
“Deiphobus! Your spear!”
There was no answer.
He looked aside. No one stood there.
Athena had worn his brother’s face. She had given Achilles back his spear unseen, and left Hector with an empty hand.
He drew his sword.
There was nowhere left to run that the gods would not follow. He gathered what strength remained and charged.
Achilles knew the armor Hector wore. He had worn it himself; he knew the opening at the neck. His spear found it.
Hector fell close enough to hear Achilles breathing.
His last plea was for his body to go home. Achilles refused him. Hector spoke then of the death waiting for Achilles at these same gates, by Paris and Apollo.
When he was still, Achilles fastened the body to his chariot and drove toward the ships. Dust rose behind him. On the wall, Priam watched his son being carried away.
A Father’s Journey
The nights after Hector’s death brought Priam no rest.
Achilles buried Patroclus and held games in his honor, but would not release Hector. He dragged the body again beside his friend’s grave. The gods preserved it from destruction; even in death, Hector had not been abandoned by them.
At last Zeus sent word to both sides. Thetis told Achilles to accept ransom. Iris came to Priam with the command to go to the Greek camp and bring his son home.
Priam opened the chests in his house.
He laid out fine cloth, gold, and vessels. His hands moved uncertainly over things he had owned for years and could scarcely recognize. He chose them for the man who had killed Hector.
Hecuba tried to stop him.
“He will kill you too.”
Priam fastened a chest.
“I am going.”
He went with an old herald and a wagon of ransom. When the city had fallen behind them, the plain seemed wider than it had from the walls. Darkness gathered over ground where his sons had died.
A young man approached near the river.
Priam froze. Then the stranger took his hand gently and offered to guide him.
He knew where Hector lay. He said the body remained unharmed. Priam listened as though every word were water brought to a man who had been unable to swallow.
They crossed the Greek defenses. The guards slept. Doors opened that the old men could not have forced.
Outside Achilles’s shelter, the guide told Priam who he was.
Hermes.
Then the god withdrew, leaving the father to enter alone.
The Hands That Killed
Achilles was sitting near the table when Priam came in.
Before anyone could stop him, the old man knelt, clasped his knees, and lifted Achilles’s hands to his lips.
The room grew still.
Priam could feel the strength in those hands. He had seen what they could do from the walls of Troy. He held them anyway.
“Your father is old,” he said. “Like me.”
Achilles stared at him.
“He can still hope to see you come home.” Priam’s voice failed. He took a breath. “Give me my son.”
Peleus rose in Achilles’s mind: his father waiting across the sea, in a house Achilles would not enter again. Then Patroclus was there too, and all the things that neither victory nor ransom could return.
Achilles began to weep.
Priam bowed over his hands, weeping for Hector. For a while neither tried to speak above the other’s grief.
At last Achilles raised him.
“Sit.”
“Not while he lies outside. Let me see him.”
Achilles’s face tightened. His anger had not vanished with his tears.
“Do not press me. He will be returned.”
Priam fell silent.
Achilles went out to have the body washed and wrapped where the father would not see it yet. He feared what Priam’s grief might stir in his own. When the preparations were done, he helped lift Hector onto the wagon himself.
Then he returned to the room.
“He is ready.”
They ate. Priam had scarcely tasted food since his son’s death. Now he held bread in hands that shook, while across the table Achilles sat in the lamplight. They looked at one another with wonder: the young warrior and the old king, each still alive in the other’s presence.
Achilles asked how long Troy would need for the funeral.
Priam told him. Wood had to be gathered; the city must mourn, burn the body, and raise the tomb.
“You will have the time.”
Before dawn the wagon left the Greek camp.
At Troy, Cassandra saw it coming. The cry spread through the streets, and Hector’s family came out to meet him. Andromache touched the face she had feared never to see again.
For the days Achilles had promised, no Greek attack interrupted them. The Trojans gathered wood, mourned, and laid Hector to rest. Then they covered his bones with earth and returned through the gates to the houses he had defended.