He went after Polydorus, Priam's youngest and dearest, whom the king had kept from war for his speed. In folly the boy showed himself among the champions.
Achilles hit him in the back where belt and breastplate met; the point went through beside the navel. He fell clutching his bowels as darkness veiled him.
When Hector saw his brother sinking, a mist came over his eyes. He could not keep distant; he darted at Achilles like a flame.
Achilles bounded forward, saying this was the man who had wounded his heart most and slain his comrade. Draw near and meet your doom the sooner.
Hector feared him not. Your words will not scare me like a child, he said. You are mightier, yet heaven may let a worse man slay you with a spear that has proved keen before.
He hurled, but Athena breathed lightly and turned the spear back to fall at Hector's feet. Achilles sprang to kill him, but Apollo hid Hector in thick darkness.
Thrice Achilles struck only air; the fourth time he shouted that the hound had escaped again by Phoebus's help, and that he would end him when they next met if a god helped him too. For now he would catch others.
He struck Dryops through the neck; stayed Demouchus with a spear to the knee and finished him with the sword; threw Laogonus and Dardanus from their chariot.
Tros son of Alastor came and clasped his knees in hope that Achilles would spare him and take him alive, pitying his youth. He did not know there was no soft heart or gentle mind in that man then — only the will to kill. As Tros reached with his hands, Achilles drove the sword into his liver; the liver slid out, black blood poured from the wound, and darkness veiled his eyes as life left him.
He speared Mulius through both ears; struck Echeclus on the head until the blade ran warm with blood; wounded Deucalion at the elbow sinews and cut off his head, flinging it helmet and all while marrow oozed from the backbone.
He pursued Rhigmus of Thrace through the belly from the chariot, and speared Areithous the squire in the back as he turned the horses in flight.
As fire races through a dry mountain glen when wind drives the flame every way through thick timber, so Achilles raged with his spear, chasing men he meant to kill, until the dark earth ran with blood.
As oxen tread barley on a threshing-floor until the grain is crushed under their feet, so Achilles’s horses trampled shields and bodies of the dead. Blood from hoofs and wheel-rims spattered the axle and the chariot rail. Still the son of Peleus pressed on for more glory, his hands wet with gore.