Failure, so often, was relative. It hinged on goals, on expectations. It hinged, like so many other things, on perception. Small gains could be made, could be rationalized. Others could be blamed, or even fate itself. Sometimes, though, failure could be quantified. A year. He had meant to arrive back in Myrken an entire year ago, before the frost of last year. Here he was then, just as frost was nipping this year.
That was a failure, but not nearly so much so as if he he never arrived at all. Here he was. They. Here they were. Genny. Her coterie (a driver, a guard, one more overeager than the other). Egris, the Kestrel, army abandoned. Two women. Two capable, brilliant women, two sides of wholly different coins, one that could well have her face minted on them. That was no accident, not really. Maybe the timing. Maybe. Some days he wasn't entirely sure.
The road had not changed him, welcome as the company had been. The changes had happened beforehand, a special brand of metaphorical alchemy that was all too literal, touching the molten vein of a real Power, of a Quene, thus spelled, thus spelling. Now, he was steps off a ledge, steps and steps and more steps forth, bolstered not by his refusal to look down, but instead by an energy, a restlessness, that made all that he truly was even more so, broader, louder, brighter; unleashed.
The usual letters were sent to bankers and taxmen, to those who owed Glenn something or that he owed something more. Lodging was secured, near Egris though not on top of her.
One more day of riding would do it, even at the pace they had been going, the pleasant pace, one that allowed for questions and answers that weren't just life and death, that led to bonds and familiarity and just a little bit of healthy contempt. Nothing unconditional and nothing absolute. They were human, after all, flawed and broken, jagged and razor-sharp. Pieces might fit together to a greater whole, but never perfectly. There was beauty and that, and the three of them, here at the end of the trail, could see it in their own unique ways.
In this moment, the gate closing behind them, this strange party, one that could only be made stranger by a raven that was not currently present, was shaded obliquely by a fleeing sunset. In this moment, Burnie looked out, knowing full well what was before him, to an extent before them all, ancient and primal, long-lived and insatiable, lived-too-long and bitter, mysterious and obvious, a hope in and around it that something might be different this time, that this plan might be better than the last, that the flaw had been in something other than him.
One night's sleep and one day's ride. In the face of this specific tomorrow, of the looming Myrken, of the known Doom and the this one, final, mad glimpse of hope, Glenn Burnie, so unveiled for the first time in near a decade, smiled. Tomorrow, then. Tomorrow.