Doctor Who_ The Myth Makers - Donald Cotton [3]
His opponent was a different matter; younger by some ten years, I would say, and with the grace of a dancer. Which he certainly needed, as he spun and pirouetted to avoid the great bronze, two-handed sword which Hector wielded – in one hand –
as casually as though it was a carving knife in the hands of a demented chef.
He was more lightly armoured than Hector: but I couldn’t help feeling that this was not so much a matter of military requirement, as of pride in the displaying of his perfectly proportioned body. He had that look of Narcissistic petulance one so often sees on the faces of health fanatics, or on male models who pose for morally suspect sculptors. I believe the Greeks have a word for it nowadays.
So, although I felt a certain sympathy for him at being so obviously out of his league, I must confess I didn’t like him. I wondered who he could be. Hector was so notoriously invincible, that during the course of this ridiculous war he had been avoided by the Greeks as scrupulously as tax-inspectors are shunned by writers. Even the mighty Ajax, I had heard, had pleaded a migraine on being invited to indulge in single combat with him; and yet here was this slender, skipping, ballet-boy, obviously intent on pursuing the matter to the foregone conclusion of his being sliced into more easily disposable sections, and fed to the jackals. Who, I may say, were even now circling the improvized arena with an eye to business.
But the question of his identity was soon solved, as the two heroes paused for a gulp of dust...
‘Out of breath so soon, Achilles, my lightfoot princeling?’
inquired the giant politely. ‘Your friend, Patroclus fled me further, and made better sport.’
So there I had it. Achilles and Patroclus: their relationship was well-known – and it explained everything.
‘Murderer!’, spat Achilles, without wit, ‘Patroclus was a boy.’
A boy? Quite so. To understand is not necessarily to approve.
‘A boy, you say?’ said Hector warming to his theme: ‘Well he died most like a dog, whimpering for his master. Did you not hear him? He feared the dark, and was loth to enter it without you! Come – let me send you to him, where he waits in Hades!
Let me throw him a bone or two!’
Well, what can you say to a remark like that? But after a moment’s thought Achilles achieved the following:
‘Your bones would be the meatier, Trojan, though meat a trifle run to fat. Well all’s one... they will whiten well enough in the sun –
They may foul the air a little, but the world will be the sweeter for it.’
Not bad, really, on the spur of the moment: especially if you have to speak in that approximation to blank verse, which for some reason, heroes always adopt at times like these. (We shall notice the phenomenon again and it is as well to be prepared.) But Hector was not to be discouraged by such rudimentary rodomantade, and chose to ignore it.
‘Run, Achilles, run! Run just a little more, before you die!
What, don’t you want to leave a legend? Wouldn’t you like the poets to sing of you, eh? Not even to be the swiftest of the Greeks? Must I rob you of even that small distinction?’
Achilles was noticably piqued... after all he’d won prizes...
‘Hector, by all the gods, I swear...’ he said, and subsided, speechless.
Hector knew he’d made a good debating point, and sneered triumphantly. ‘The gods? What gods? Do you dare to swear by your petty pantheology? That ragbag of squabbling, hobble-de-hoy Olympians – those little gods to frighten children? What sort of gods are those for a man to worship?’
And now, by a curious coincidence, there came a rumble of thunder, as one of those summer storms that pester the Aegean came flickering up from the South... and Achilles could take a cue when he heard one...
‘Beware the voice of Zeus, Hector! Beware the rage of Olympus!’ The remark didn’t go down at all well.
‘Ha! Who am I to fear the thunder, you superstitious, dart-dodging decadent? Hear me, Zeus: accept from me the life of your craven servant, Achilles! Or else, I challenge you: descend to earth and save him.’
And, at that