make haste.
Patroclus armed himself in the shining armour of Achilles, which all
Trojans feared, and leaped into the chariot where Automedon, the squire,
had harnessed Xanthus and Balius, two horses that were the children, men
said, of the West Wind, and a led horse was harnessed beside them in the
side traces. Meanwhile the two thousand men of Achilles, who were called
Myrmidons, had met in armour, five companies of four hundred apiece,
under five chiefs of noble names. Forth they came, as eager as a pack of
wolves that have eaten a great red deer and run to slake their thirst
with the dark water of a well in the hills.

So all in close array, helmet touching helmet and shield touching
shield, like a moving wall of shining bronze, the men of Achilles
charged, and Patroclus in the chariot led the way. Down they came at
full speed on the flank of the Trojans, who saw the leader, and knew the
bright armour and the horses of the terrible Achilles, and thought that
he had returned to the war. Then each Trojan looked round to see by what
way he could escape, and when men do that in battle they soon run by the
way they have chosen. Patroclus rushed to the ship of Protesilaus, and
slew the leader of the Trojans there, and drove them out, and quenched
the fire; while they of Troy drew back from the ships, and Aias and the
other unwounded Greek princes leaped among them, smiting with sword and
spear. Well did Hector know that the break in the battle had come again;
but even so he stood, and did what he might, while the Trojans were
driven back in disorder across the ditch, where the poles of many
chariots were broken and the horses fled loose across the plain.

The horses of Achilles cleared the ditch, and Patroclus drove them
between the Trojans and the wall of their own town, slaying many men,
and, chief of all, Sarpedon, king of the Lycians; and round the body of
Sarpedon the Trojans rallied under Hector, and the fight swayed this way
and that, and there was such a noise of spears and swords smiting
shields and helmets as when many woodcutters fell trees in a glen of the
hills. At last the Trojans gave way, and the Greeks stripped the armour
from the body of brave Sarpedon; but men say that Sleep and Death, like
two winged angels, bore his body away to his own country. Now Patroclus
forgot how Achilles had told him not to pursue the Trojans across the
plain, but to return when he had driven them from the ships. On he
raced,