In his mind and in his flesh he saw and felt the fire, the battle fury.
His captains accepted his command without a word and in their eyes he saw respect and trembling, and nods and reverences, no smiles, no laughter, and he felt like a giant among men.
And the maps burned golden in the torchlight like the gold and might of Casterly Rock, and his armour was red and gold like his heart and the carpets and cushions of his tent were red and blue like the Houses that lay before him waiting to be swept away like leaves, to be burnt in the inferno against them, against his father, against the fathers and the ancestors of the men behind the walls, against the laughs that had echoed around him before turning into hands that had grasped his heart between their hard iron fingers and had killed it in his chest while he wailed and screamed.
In his mind and in his flesh he saw and felt the fire, the battle fury.
And he was faster than them all, and better, and quieter, as blue moonlight crept across the plain on the seventh night and he sat silent, like iron, on his warhorse, the host rustling like grass around him, reed-thin and peaceful like the sleep ensnaring the men behind the walls who had never thought and had never imagined and would not, ever again, as he gave the signal, and they marched, and ran and screamed not at all; a mighty serpent of blackness and darkness and death that he watched trample the blue as they advanced.
And the sky was gold and the fire was red as trebuchets roared out flame and stone that tore at the walls, and he was faster even than the blaze as he thundered out across the plain amongst his men, watching the blue disappear beneath his horse's hooves, watching it fade from the sky as the gold and the dark suffocated it.
And the gates were open and his men were following him, knowing it was him, and the ants and the insects were beneath him, clawing at him with their pincers and their little brittle legs that glanced off him because he was faster than them, and better than them, and his sword was a flame by itself that danced through all of them, sending them down into the dark that trampled the blue or up into the gold that suffocated it. And his lust for the heat and the fire grew as he killed one, and another, and another, the tiniest part of his senses listening to the sound of the mud and the stone, the mines, the mines that had been tearing at the blue for the past week while he fought in the light, though tonight in the dark, bringing out more and more fighting men, making such a racket such a symphony of red and gold that the blue could not see how their foundations crumbled, to dust, to nothingness, to the dirt beneath his feet. And the dirt and the foundations were men as well as heads and arms and legs rolled past him and under him and his sword was a red beacon that shone and steamed in the dark, the dark that murdered the blue.
In his mind and in his flesh he saw and felt the fire, the battle fury.
The sweetness of death, the scent of it, the feel of it, the clang it sent ringing through his hand and right inside him, better than a human voice. And screams for mercy that were silenced, again and again, howling out before being sealed back up with blood, and bone, and flesh.
And two visions of himself, steadfastness and anger, Kevan and Tygett, one larger than himself, one thinner, riding to him twinned in crimson and gold, the crimson and gold that destroyed the blue beneath and above him, and 'the miners are ready, my lord,' and a race, a call, a call, through the blood, back to the blue from whence they came, from where he had sat silent, like iron, on his warhorse, the host rustling like grass around him, reed-thin and peaceful like the sleep ensnaring the men behind the walls who had never thought and had never imagined and would not, ever again.
In his mind and in his flesh he saw and felt the fire, the battle fury.
And he watched the gold move across the sky and the black trample the blue beneath him for the second time that night, and the walls and the hall, Tarbeck Hall, and the flames. And the screams, the screams as the hall came down, of men entombed in stone, and mountains of stone, and mountains of men, and women now, and children, and tears in his eyes, and a smile, a smile that caressed his face like a gentle breeze making the blood without him flow and the blood within him soar, and 'your orders, my lord?' and 'put them all to the sword,' and the joy and the ecstasy and the carving of smiles onto dead faces and the disappointment the displeasure at there being so few left to kill, at the stone that had killed the blue while the red and the gold looked on, but there was no other way he thought, but there was no other way. And there is always Castamere, there is always the red, the red lion that will fight its twin and the savagery and the blood that will flow, that will drip, that will run, through their House and into the earth, a tomb not of stone, but of flesh and bone.
And in his mind and in his flesh he saw and felt the fire, the battle fury.