y and
I take your life, I am not to treat your dead body in any unseemly
fashion, but when I have stripped you of your armour, I am to give up
your body to the Achaeans. And do you likewise."

Achilles glared at him and answered, "Fool, prate not to me about
covenants. There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and
lambs can never be of one mind, but hate each other out and out all
through. Therefore there can be no understanding between you and me,
nor may there be any covenants between us, till one or other shall fall
and glut grim Mars with his life's blood. Put forth all your strength;
you have need now to prove yourself indeed a bold soldier and man of
war. You have no more chance, and Pallas Minerva will forthwith
vanquish you by my spear: you shall now pay me in full for the grief
you have caused me on account of my comrades whom you have killed in
battle."

He poised his spear as he spoke and hurled it. Hector saw it coming and
avoided it; he watched it and crouched down so that it flew over his
head and stuck in the ground beyond; Minerva then snatched it up and
gave it back to Achilles without Hector's seeing her; Hector thereon
said to the son of Peleus, "You have missed your aim, Achilles, peer of
the gods, and Jove has not yet revealed to you the hour of my doom,
though you made sure that he had done so. You were a false-tongued liar
when you deemed that I should forget my valour and quail before you.
You shall not drive your spear into the back of a runaway--drive it,
should heaven so grant you power, drive it into me as I make straight
towards you; and now for your own part avoid my spear if you can--would
that you might receive the whole of it into your body; if you were once
dead the Trojans would find the war an easier matter, for it is you who
have harmed them most."

He poised his spear as he spoke and hurled it. His aim was true for he
hit the middle of Achilles' shield, but the spear rebounded from it,
and did not pierce it. Hector was angry when he saw that the weapon had
sped from his hand in vain, and stood there in dismay for he had no
second spear. With a loud cry he called Deiphobus and asked him for
one, but there was no man; then he saw the truth and said to himself,
"Alas! the gods have lured me on to my destruction. I deemed that the
hero Deiphobus was by my side, but he is within the wall, and Minerva
has inveigled me; death is now indeed exceedingly near at hand and
the