BERIC

He hadn't been there in decades, and what he remembered of it had been whittled away by journey after journey into the dark beyond. Over the years, his past of lordship and tourneys had been blotted out by the storm gathering in the back of his mind; ever present, ever looming, a black cloud beyond a shining white battlement. For years, now, it had been the Goliath to he and his men; the insurmountable object. Faced with that, and his memories being torn from him, Beric tended to forget the little things.

But as his horse crests a sloping hill at the head of the Brotherhood's procession, delivered onto a breadth of beauty stained with gold and crimson flowers as far as the eye can see, friendly trees and inviting ponds, Beric remembers why they call it the Reach. It's like he can stretch his arms out to the horizon and grip all the finery in the world.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," moans a raspy, thick voice from behind him. Beric's lips curl into an exasperated smile. The sun glitters above them, turning everyone's armor and weapons into slivers and curves of light. A cornucopia of splendor is laid out before the Brotherhood, and all that Sandor Clegane can do is whine.

"We've been on the move since the Riverlands, and not a single inn from there to Ashford has had one fucking chicken."

"There'll be food in Sunspear, Clegane," Beric answers, turning his head to look at Clegane with his one good eye. The Hound is clad in a knight's chainmail and pauldrons again, and his beard and stringy locks of hair have grown longer and fuller. Beric almost doesn't recognize the foul-mouthed man, at least not compared to their meetings in the past; only the melted skin on the right side of his face that blanketed his obliterated brow gives it away; that and his standoffishness towards almost anyone who spoke to him. A Hound indeed.

"Oh, fuck that. I'd rather not choke to death on a saucer's full of spices, thanks."

Hooves clop up from behind the two, and Thoros of Myr brings his horse into a slow trot next to Clegane's. "What, Dornish food too hot for you, dog?" He grins at his and Beric's grim companion, what few teeth the drunkard had left stark against his scarred face. "Thought you'd gotten over that problem with the heat, what with all our burning weapons, 'n such." Thoros' beard had become too sweltering for him in the southern heat, and he'd singed it off with his wild, flaming blade. Beric hasn't seen his friend clean-shaven before.

"Eat shit, baldy. You look like a little girl with that dumb fucking topknot and no beard."

"I hear you take a liking to them, Clegane. Run them up and down Westeros to their families. Were you trying to run an orphanage? You should have stayed in King's Landing for that."

"It'd make more sense for us to go there than Dorne. Y'said cold winds, Beric," Clegane growls.

"Aye, that I did."

"Cold winds. Like they have in the North."

"No, I suppose Dorne doesn't have many of those."

"Then why the fuck are we here?"

Beric's smile fell, and as always when the darkness beyond the Wall came up, the rest of the contents of his mind were squashed into the background. He sighs, and he feels as though he's lived a full life for each of his deaths, and is older than old. He jabs a thumb behind himself, Clegane, and Thoros, behind the Brotherhoods procession, behind Reach and Crownland and Riverland, behind a wall of ice, where one rotting horse trotted slowly.

"We're here because the Lord of Light R'hllor has willed it, Clegane," he said. "There are darker things in this world than Cersei Lannister or your brother. There aren't many who are preparing for the war to come. The real war. We're some of those who believe. Another was just crowned King In The North."

"Which is precisely my point," Clegane shoots back. "Why aren't we riding North?"

Thoros unslings a wineskin from his shoulder and uncaps it, gulping down a swig of honeyed wine.

"Look behind us," he splutters as red liquid rolls down his naked chin. "A few hundred swords alone won't do the living any good against the Night King. The dead don't fear the bite of steel. Westeros needs fire, and lots of it."

Clegane groans, snatching the skin from Thoros and downing the whole thing in three long, noisy drafts. "I've seen enough fucking fire for my day, Beric. Just my luck I get stuck with three hundred men who think every crackle is some fart from god. And you." He turned in his saddle to look Thoros down, dwarfing the smaller man and, Beric was sure, affixing him with that deadly black-eyed stare, where Clegane's pupil and iris were one, a single threatening orb.

"I haven't learned much in my day," he rasped. "But I know one thing for damn sure, Thoros. The dead fear nothing. Nothing at all, because they're dead. They're bags of rotten meat in the ground and could give two shits what the living do."

"You're right," Beric interjects with geniality. "They fear nothing. I know you only fear one thing, Clegane. But when the sky is black for years, the snows bury our castles, and the dead are all that still walk, will you be so afraid of fire then?"

Clegane is silent then, his eyes on the road and the sky interchangeably, likely pondering the grim weight of Beric's words. Beric puts a hand on the shoulder of his armor, and the Hound stabs at him with that dark stare again, but he ignores it.

"The threat is real, Clegane," Beric says. "And we need more than three hundred men to give to Jon Snow when the time comes."

"What the fuck else we got?"

"A horde of Dothraki, eight thousand Unsullied, legions of ironmen and Tyrell and Martell vassals, and three dragons."