Battle Fever

On Killing Series

A Clash of Kings by George Martin, 1999, Excerpt

The Battle Fever. He [Tyrion the Dwarf] had never thought to experience it himself, though Jamie had told him of it often enough. How time seemed to blur and slow and even stop, how the past and the future vanished until there was nothing but the instant, how fear fled, and thought fled, and even your body. “You don’t feel wounds then, or the ache in your back from the weight of armor, or the sweat running down into your eyes. You stop feeling, you stop thinking, you stop being you, there is only the fight, the foe, this man and then the next and the next, and you know they are afraid and tired but you’re not, you’re alive, and death is all around you but their swords move so slowly, you can dance through them laughing.” Battle fever. I am half a man and drunk with slaughter; let them kill me if they can!