He said truly that fate had caught him, yet he would not die without a struggle or without glory. He drew the great sharp sword at his side and sprang on Achilles like an eagle stooping from cloud on a lamb or hare.
Achilles charged with the Pelian spear, searching for an opening in the armor Hephaestus had made — the armor Hector wore, stripped once from Patroclus. Where the collar-bones leave the neck and throat bare, Achilles drove the point straight through. The spear went out at the nape, but the windpipe was not severed, so Hector could still speak as he fell.
He fell in the dust. Achilles vaunted over him, saying Hector had thought himself safe when he stripped Patroclus, and had not remembered Achilles left behind. Now dogs and birds would tear him, while Patroclus would have burial from the Argives.
Hector, life ebbing, begged by life and knees and parents that dogs not devour him at the ships, but that Achilles take gold and bronze from Priam and give the body home for Troy to burn with honor.
Achilles answered that he wished he could cut Hector's flesh and eat it raw for what he had done. No ransom, not if Priam weighed Hector's weight in gold, would keep the dogs from him. Hector with dying breath said he knew that iron heart, and warned of the day when Paris and Apollo would kill Achilles at the Scaean gates.
Death covered him, and his soul flew to Hades lamenting youth and strength left behind. Achilles spoke even to the dead, saying he would accept his own fate whenever Zeus and the other gods wished to fulfill it.