Hello everyone. Here's the next instalment, and thanks again to all the reviewers and followers and favourite-ers who keep this story going.

Despite the reviews, I couldn't find any remarking on my new plot line, unless the "tone down the dramatisation" reviewer just wasn't being specific. Honorary mention and imaginary prize to the review which has the best improvement for my plot summary!

Chapter 12:

As a line my army obeyed. We charged across the field, crying out as we did, so loud I wondered how they still managed to sprint, but they all kept it up.

As I turned to look at my army – my men – everything went into slow motion. I saw a footman near me raise his sword to me in fervour, and I saw the sunlight glint off his steel. Further on, I could see every action of that footman reflected across hundreds, thousands, all my men here today. I turned my head back, and saw the Hound, twirling a massive greatsword in his hand as if a stick.

I reached up with my gauntlet, and closed my visor, blinking as my world receded into a thin slit of vision. I breathed out. I breathed in.

Halfway there.

I thought about what I was going to do. I might die. I might kill. There would be death either way.

Nearly there.

I could see the expressions on the face of the enemy now. No man standing up was unscathed – I noticed the blackened clothes, the dented and melting armour flung off, abandoned, the fear in their eyes as we were approaching-

We were there.

The fear on the face of the soldier opposite me disappeared, just as my sword shot through the air and appeared in his neck.

Quickly as it happened, he was gone, and a snarling, sinewy man took his place, without any armour but with two long, rusted daggers. He stepped forward and sliced across at me before ducking back, a precise, practised move that would kill anyone.

Anyone without plate, that is.

The serrated edge of the knife scraped along my breastplate, before bouncing off, leaving nought but a small scratch. I sliced with my dagger, and its bite did more than scratch the sinewy fighter.

He fell forward, surprise and fear masking his features. Then he landed, and his face disappeared from view, lost, forgotten.

Then another soldier took his place, shouting, "I've got the traitor! I've got the traitor!" until my blade got him in the face, and both his urgent cry and his existence ended.

Another soldier took his place. I forgot his face the moment I saw it. He died too fast for me to try again, and after that, someone else took his place.

And so the cycle continued. I would slice, parry, duck, block, thrust, kick, punch, slice, slice, slice – do anything to stem the flow of enemies that poured straight to me.

At one point I was fighting inside a merchant's carriage, at another I was escaping when someone set fire to it. I remember tripping over a dead body, landing the moment before an axe appeared where my head was. I thanked the dismembered corpse, before scrambling up, trying to block the madman's axe.

The madman in question happened to be half a giant, and the axe, an ugly, double-bladed shaft of metal larger than a shield – I knew to be death if you got hit. I shrank back, ducking and jumping out of the way when the axe came my way. "How could I kill this idiot?" I wondered.

As I was contemplating the best form of evisceration, the madman managed to feint with the axe, swing it one way, then stopping, swinging it back and then around to attack from the other side, a feat I almost admired – that was, up until it hit me straight into the side.

The sheer force of it was almost incomprehensible. My neck almost snapped purely from the whiplash, and I was sent, careening like a rag doll, across part of the enemy camp. My swords fell out of my hands, so quickly I couldn't even feel it. About halfway through my debut flight, my body realised there was something wrong with my right side, and began to tell me, in the form of pain.

A thousand fiery spiders bit me, each locking its jaws and twisting, fighting for a place amongst each other to rip my flesh and gnaw my bones, till I felt there was naught but blood and churned up flesh on my body.

I barely felt the landing, although I knew I would later. I couldn't breathe, and tears instantly sprang to my eyes. What had I done to deserve this? I was just a boy, a victim in this world. Why me?

I looked at my armour, seeing it through blotted vision, sparks of flame jumping across my eyes as I saw that it had taken a dent and a half. On top of that, my right arm was dead and my ribs were on fire. And that was just the good news.

There was still an axe-wielding murderer behind me.

This knowledge – this certainty that if I didn't move now my life would end here – gave me the strength, the will, to crawl on, to stand up. Not to die crying out in pain, writhing on the floor. It was the first injury I had taken. It would be the last – that I swore.

With an effort I couldn't even imagine replicating, I wriggled along the floor, focusing only on my twin swords lying next to a set of crates a few feet in front of me. From there anything could happen. I had to get there.

Two feet.

I could almost wriggle without pain now, an unsurprising fact considering the speed of my heart rate and the sheer volume of adrenaline coursing through my veins, so much I almost felt like it would explode out of me like a massive, bloody geyser.

One foot.

I tried to stand up, placing a quivering leg on the ground, before it failed and shot to the ground again, taking me down with it.

Then I was behind the crate, and I turned round, feeling safe behind the protection of the wooden box.

Then it crumpled as the madman cleaved it in two with his axe.

I scrambled back, heart beating so fast it felt like it would burst. I jumped up, managing, by some miracle, to stay on my feet. I grabbed the swords, and looked up at the madman, just a moment before the axe shot out again from the side of my vision.

I brought my blades up, forming a protective "X" shape with the steel. It was barely enough protection from the colossus in front of me, the swords buckling and a deep nick appearing in both.

It was worse for the madman, however, who had clearly not expected resistance of that kind, or maybe he simply was a bad fighter. Either way, his axe, having clanged off my blades, proceeded to buck out of his hands and fell to the ground. He blinked rapidly, shocked, before automatically reaching down to grab his weapon.

He never did.

Seizing the opportunity, I half-lunged, half-fell forward, slashing upward savagely as I did so. I obtained a queer, macabre delight in feeling the axe man's blood shoot out and splatter across my armour.

We both hit the floor at the same time, crashing down with a solid thump. I spent a few, precious, ecstatic moments resting on the ground. I had done it. I had killed the beast.

The fight was done.

Then I groaned and got up again, accepting the inevitable cycle of battles. It must have only been a few minutes, but it felt easily like I had been fighting for the whole day, and partway through the night as well.

I walked away from the body of the axe-wielding madman, and left his brains to leak out through his broken skull.

I walked past the series of supply wagons to where a massive group of men were fighting. Since I was on the side closest to where we began it were my men closest to me. I walked up to them and was instantly greeted by a smiling Jaime.

"Where have you been, Joffrey? The battle's over here, you know!". I didn't have the energy to smile back, and simply stood there, trying to get my breath back. As I breathed, I could see movement near the trees at the other end of the field, first only a flash of red or moment of blue, but soon glinting metal and the matt brown of skin came into view. As I watched my suspicions were confirmed, when a massive group of cavalry and footmen appeared at the other end of the field, pouring in like flies into a shaded room on a hot day.

I turned to Jaime, gaping. I told him to turn around, which he did, before transitioning from a savage smirk to a shocked silence.

"Oh bloody hell" was all he said, before I shot into action, once more alert, once more ready to fight. I concentrated, wondering how on Earth we would be able to survive a mounted charge in such disarray, and even if we did, how would we survive the battle on two fronts?

The answer came to me, subduing the monsters of panic that were ravaging my mind. This battle would finish the way it started. With fire and explosives.

I walked off, and sent a nearby squire to find Jalabhar, who ran off quickly. When I got back, I realised that Jaime had spread the message, and people far from the front line against the last patches of resistance on the other side were now building barricades out of the wagons and crates, forcing the cavalry to attack through a thin area, easily guarded by our men.

After a few seconds, Jalabhar came running up, escorted by a few of his archers. I told him my desperate plan.

"Jalabhar, I want you to aim for all the mounds that you missed the first time around. Can you do that?" He nodded, and ran off to organise his archers, tassels and ribbons flapping as he went.

I turned back, surveying the strewn field of battle before it would, once more, be incinerated. I saw only mutilated bodies and still forms. There was no mercy out there.

I turned back, satisfied, as Jalabhar returned, archers hurrying behind him. I noticed fewer archers, and signs of battle shown on their armour and faces.

As they set up, Jalabhar turned to me, and I nodded grimly. He turned away, and drew in his breath to shout the order.

I turned back to view the enemy, charging towards us. It was going to be close. The cavalry had separated from the footmen, spreading out across the field. I smiled in a sad way. Renly's pincer group, supposed to crush us completely, were not just going to be killed but had even manoeuvred in such a way that the gunpowder would affect the most amount of people.

Renly was truly screwed, and my smile turned into one of the pride of victory.

Even so, it was going to be tight. The massive battlehorses of Renly's forces were barely the width of a football field away, and were charging a lot faster than athletes.

As the horses got closer, they reached the string of bodies, littered about the ground where our armies had clashed. They made no attempt to avoid them, smashing straight through the broken corpses. I was shocked. Those were their own men, some of whom could still be alive.

Just as I thought it, a movement passed in front of me, in front of the charging cavalry. I looked closer, and saw a soldier sitting up, rubbing his head. From the amount of blood on the poor man, I couldn't see whose side he was on, but he certainly didn't deserve to die crushed by half a ton of premium horseflesh.

I shouted at him, telling him to "get out of the bloody way you fool". As I was speaking, he turned around, and I noticed the grey clothes, the sigil.

It was a Stark soldier.

That made it all the worse. That poor man was definitely on our side, and if he didn't move, he would die.

Luckily, he managed to stand up, and began to walk, then run, shakily, towards us.

He was…really small. And really thin, like the over-large dagger he was wearing.

And…why was he shrieking with such a high voice?

Then his grey, steely gaze caught mine, and I looked into the eyes of Arya Stark.

Then the arrows, carrying their small flames, flew through the air, lighting up the sky as they gently landed on mounds of gunpowder.