We ground the soil of Sigios to powder under the trample of our boots, it drifted far above our heads and rose to the vault of the sky. Though in later battles I behaved with more logic and had a thought for my men, in that one their welfare never entered what passed for my mind. I didn’t care who was winning or losing as long as I was winning. If Agamemnon himself had fought next to me, I wouldn’t have known. Not even Patrokles penetrated my furore, though he was the sole reason why I survived that first fight, for he kept the Trojans off my back.

Suddenly someone swung a shield across my path. I struck with all my might to come at the face behind it, but like a bolt from a bow he stepped aside and his sword came within a hair of my right arm. I gasped as if flung into a pool of icy water, then shook in exultation when he lowered his shield to see me better. A prince at last! Clad all in gold. The axe he had used to cut Iolaos down had vanished, replaced by a longsword. Snarling my pleasure, I faced him eagerly. A very big man, he had the look of one used to excelling in battle, and he was the first man who dared to challenge me. We circled warily, my axe dragging on the ground by its thong until he gave me an opening. When I leaped and swung he flicked aside, but I was fast too; I dodged the sweep of his sword as easily as he had evaded my axe. Understanding that we had each found a worthy foe, we settled down to the duel steadily and patiently. Bronze rang on bronze-backed gold, always a parry, neither of us able to wound the other, each of us conscious that the soldiers, Trojan and Greek, had moved back to give us room.

Whenever I missed my mark he laughed, though in four places his golden shield gaped to show the bronze, the innermost layers of tin. I had to fight my rising rage as hard as I fought him – how dared he laugh! Duels were sacred work, not to be desecrated by ridicule, and it infuriated me that he couldn’t seem to feel that sanctity. I made two mighty lunges one after the other and missed him. Then he spoke.

‘What’s your name, Clumsy?’ he asked, laughing.

‘Achilles,’ I said between my teeth.

That made him laugh harder. ‘Never heard of you, Clumsy! I’m Kyknos, son of Poseidon of the Deeps.’

‘All dead men stink alike, son of Poseidon, be they fathered by Gods or men!’ I cried.

Which only made him laugh.

The same kind of rage swelled up in me that I had endured when I saw Iphigenia lying dead on the altar, and I forgot all the rules of combat Chiron and my father had taught me. With a shriek I sprang on him, in under the point of his blade, my axe raised. He leaped backwards, stumbling; his sword fell, and I broke it into a hundred fragments. Round came his wasp-waisted, man-sized shield to cover his back as he turned and ran, pushing through the Trojan troops in savage desperation, calling for a spear. Someone thrust the weapon into his hand, but I was too close on his tail for him to use it. He went on retreating.

I plunged into the closing ranks of Trojans after him. Not one man among them aimed a blow at me, whether because they were too frightened or because they respected the time-honoured tenets of duel, I never discovered. The throng dwindled until the battle lay behind us, until a looming cliff brought Kyknos the son of Poseidon to a halt. The spear describing lazy circles, he turned to face me. I stopped too, waiting for him to cast, but he preferred to use the spear as a lance than as a javelin. Wise, since I had both axe and sword. When he flicked the head forward, I jumped to one side. Time and time again it darted at my chest, but I was young and as easy on my feet as a much lighter man. I saw my chance, went in and broke the spear in two. All he had now was his dagger. Not finished yet, he groped for it.

Never had I wanted anyone dead as much as I wanted this buffoon dead – yet not cleanly dead, felled by axe or sword. I dropped the axe and pulled the heavy baldric holding my sword over my head. My dagger followed. The amusement left his face at last. He finally gave me the respect I had vowed to wrest from him. But he could still speak words!

‘What was your name, Clumsy? Achilles?’

The pain consumed me; I was unable to answer. He was not close enough to the God to understand that a duel between those of the Royal Kindred was as silent as it was holy.

I jumped at him and sent him sprawling before he had his dagger out; he scrambled to his feet and backed away until his heels collided with the buttresses of the cliff. Over he went, flung out against the sloping rock behind him. Perfect. I took his chin in one hand and used the other as a hammer, smashed his face to pulp and broke every bone beneath it without caring what damage I did to myself. His helmet had come undone; I grasped its long, dangling straps and drew them tight under his jaw, twined them about his neck and put my knee in his belly, dragging on them until his maimed face was black and his eyes bulged to glaring balls of red-streaked horror.

Not until he must have been dead for some time did I let the straps go; I looked at something more an object than a man. For a moment I felt sick at the realisation that I had a lust for the kill as deep as that, but I crushed the weakness and lifted Kyknos athwart my shoulders, slinging his shield across my own back to protect it as I made the return journey through the Trojan ranks. I wanted my Myrmidons and the rest of the Greeks to see that I had lost neither him nor the fight.

A small detachment led by Patrokles met me on the edge of the battle; we got back to our own lines unscathed. But I paused to drop Kyknos at the feet of his own men, his swollen tongue puffed between his ribboned lips, his eyes still goggling.

‘My name,’ I howled, ‘is Achilles!’

The Trojans fled; the man they had deemed an Immortal was proven just another man like them.

There followed the ritual at the end of a duel to the death between members of the Royal Kindred; I stripped him of his armour as my prize and sent his carcass to the Sigios refuse pit, where it would be eaten by the town dogs. But not before I cut off his head and stuck it on a spear, an odd apparition with its ghastly face and beautiful, unmarked golden braids of hair. I gave it to Patrokles, who embedded it in the shingle like a banner.

The whole Trojan force suddenly broke. Since they knew where to flee, they outdistanced us easily, their retreat fairly well disciplined. The field and Sigios were ours.

Agamemnon called a halt to the pursuit, an order I was loath to obey until Odysseus caught my arm as I loped past him and swung me roughly around. He was strong! Much stronger than he looked.

‘Leave it be, Achilles,’ he said. ‘The gates will be shut – save your strength and your men in case the Trojans try again tomorrow. We have a mess to sort out before darkness.’

Seeing the good sense in his words, I turned with him to trudge back to the beach, Patrokles by my side as always, the Myrmidons falling in behind us singing the victory paean. We ignored the houses: if there were women inside them we wanted none of them. At the edge of the pebbles we stood aghast. Men were sprawled everywhere. Screams, cries, groans, babbling pleas for help came from all sides. Some of the bodies moved, others lay still, their shades fled into the dreary wastes of the Dark Kingdom, the realm of Hades.

Odysseus and Agamemnon stood apart as men swarmed over the ships, prying them loose where beaks had stove into sides or sterns, while the beach was tidied up, our men were transferred onto the ships, and the outer ranks of vessels moved into the stream. When I glanced up at the sun I found it sinking, about a third of the day remaining. My bones felt leaden with weariness, my arm felt too heavy to lift, and the axe dragged on the ground from its thong. I could think of nothing else to do than join Agamemnon, who stared at me with jaw dropped. Obviously he had not avoided battle, for his cuirass was buckled, his face grimed with gore and filth. And now I saw him with the leisure to look, Odysseus presented an odd sight. His breastplate was split open to display his chest, yet his skin was unmarked.