After a night filled with Sam bitching and moaning about how really, really short the beds were, Dean was actually glad to be on a horse again, waiting in the castle yard to ride off to the Plain of Death. (He could hear the capital letters when Galavant told them where they were going.) The horse he was sitting on kept shuffling around, tossing its head and turning it back to him with an evil look in its eye. He glared back at it and it snorted contemptuously.
For some reason, Sam was much better situated, and his horse waited patiently. No head-tossing or dancing around there. Dean shot him a jaundiced look.
"So when'd you get so good with horses, Sammy?"
Sam just smiled into the distance, reminiscing. "It was an elective at Stanford. Counted as phys-ed. Took it a bunch of times. Nice way to mentally go over stuff before a test, y'know?"
"No. I don't know," Dean answered grumpily. "The way this beast is behaving, I'd never be able to think about anything else but staying on!"
Sam looked at him and grinned. He was about to say something when Galavant and King Richard steered their horses out of the stable to join them.
"Well, well, our foreign investigators are up and about, ready to get to work!" The king beamed at them, happy to see them ready to go.
"So I see," Galavant said, reining his horse around. He skewered them with a look, lifted his head in a hero's pose, and called out, "Shall we ride?" Dean was about to respond when the mysterious musical accompaniment began once more. He winced and squeezed his eyes shut. Then he opened them wide, startled, as Galavant and Richard started their horses cantering toward the gate and his own horse shot after them.
Galavant was singing. Again. "Shall...we...ride?" The invisible strings played a punctuating rhythm after the phrase. "On a gallant steed of fashion shall we ride?"
Outside the gate, the horses stretched out into a gallop. Sam's long mahogany hair streamed out behind him. Dean held on grimly, jaw working as he listened to these madmen belting out yet another song.
"Let us see this scene of gloom upon the Plain," Richard sang, a bright, interested expression on his face.
Gareth joined in. "On the side...are lots of bodies...cold and petrified!" He seemed positively overjoyed at the thought. The music, light and bouncy and fit for dancing, was outrageously out of place for the words. Dean shook his head and focused on not falling off.
"Let us ride there...together, with our swords couched at the ready," Galavant called to them. Somehow, he managed to strike a pose while riding. Dean assumed it was the result of practice. Lots of practice.
"And will we be the next to die?" Gareth burbled. He sounded glad. Dean swore he had never met anyone quite so happy at the prospect of mayhem, pain, and death as the battle-scarred soldier.
"With that possible dire outcome, on a gallant steed of fashion, shall we ride, shall we ride, shall we ride?" Galavant drew the last phrase out. The accompaniment continued with the melody as they galloped on.
"So. Y'all done with the song? Can we actually, y'know, talk now? Like, can Sam and I get some notion of how long this ride is gonna be?" Richard pulled his horse over to ride beside him.
"Oh, it's not long!" he said cheerfully. "Two, three hours?" Dean flinched. Sam grinned at him again, face glowing with happiness; he was moving with the horse like a centaur, all natural and fluid. Damn. He really liked riding. Why hadn't he said anything about this in the past ten years? It was like a secret side of Sammy coming out. Dean wasn't sure he approved. Though, given their history...well, what was yet another secret?
Almost exactly three hours later, at the edge of a wide, rolling plain, the king, Galavant, and Gareth started slowing their horses to a walk. Dean's horse, feeling inexperienced hands on the reins, kept galloping. "Whoa! Whoa!" He turned his head to see the group dwindling behind him. "Goddammit, I said whoa!" Nothing happened; his horse just kept going. Then he heard another horse pounding up beside him. It was Sam, howling with laughter. He pulled alongside Dean's horse, grabbed the reins, and brought his own horse to a stop. Dean's horse, anchored, came to a stop, too, flicking irritated ears back and snorting. Dean glared at his brother.
"So let me get this straight. You rode these things for fun?!"
Sam grinned and nodded. "Yup. And a good thing I did, too, right?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you can get this beast from hell to go back..." Sam kneed his horse up against Dean's, pressing it around, headed back to the group waiting behind them. The trotted sedately back.
"That was exciting!" King Richard called as they came into earshot. Galavant lifted an amused eyebrow.
"What - don't you ride horses where you come from?"
Dean narrowed his eyes dangerously. "Hey. I can do a 180 in reverse in my Impala. I'd like to see you do that! Now that the horsey adventure is over...Let's take a look at your dead bodies." He turned the horse - very cautiously - and looked out over the plain. He frowned in puzzlement. "I thought there was supposed to be a 'heap of bodies'...I don't see a heap anywhere."
King Richard coughed genteelly and pointed. If Dean squinted hard, he could see a trail of what looked like stone sculptures.
"Let's get closer," Dean muttered. Everyone started their horses moving again, headed to the statues, Sam being sure to stay close to Dean.
He leaned over and said quietly, "Your horse would have slowed down and come back. Eventually. Horses are herd beasts."
"That doesn't really reassure me, dude," Dean hissed. Sam snickered. Dean rolled his eyes.
When they got to the first one, everyone swung off their horses. Dean at least tried to. But as he stood up on the one leg and tried to swing the other behind him and over his horse's rump, he whimpered; both legs felt frozen. He settled for dragging his left leg across the horse, and fell into a heap on the ground when he put his weight on it.
"Holy shit! I'm lame for life! Sammy, gimme a hand here, would ya?" He grabbed the hand Sam held out for him and staggered up, then leaned on him while hobbling to where the others were waiting. With each step, spikes of pain shot through his legs. "God damn! Sam, how long is it going to hurt like this?!" he muttered.
"Keep walking. It's the best way to stretch them out."
They walked up to the stone body on the ground, and Sam crouched down slowly, letting Dean sink slowly down with him. Dean scanned the plain around them while Sam looked over the body. Richard and Galavant peered with interest. Gareth stood behind the group, eyes flicking watchfully around them.
"I thought there was a heap. A heap of rotting stone bodies. There's a trail, yeah, but no heap. And this body ain't gonna be rotting any time soon," Dean observed.
"Poetic license. 'Aven't y'ever 'eard of poetic license?" Gareth snarled behind him. "A 'eap o' bodies fit the song better."
Dean swiveled to look at him, biting his lip to stifle his yelp of pain. "So...what? Not only do you sing your conversations, but they're not accurate, to boot?"
Gareth sniffed. "A 'eathen like you just wouldn't understand," he said loftily.
"Dean. Take a look at this," Sam said. Dean shuffled closer, peered down.
"What?"
"Well...if it was a Medusa...wouldn't there be a look of terror on this guy's face? He looks more...surprised...to me," Sam said. Dean looked closer. Sam was right - the stone mouth was slightly agape, the eyebrows arched. No grimace of fear, that was for sure.
"Hunh. Let's look at the next one." He staggered up, leaned on Sam's shoulder again, and shuffled with him to the next body, twenty feet away. They crouched down to look, and, sure enough, more surprise on this stout farm wife's stone face. Sam sat back on his heels, his hands dangling between his knees, looking at the statue on the ground. Dean levered himself upright and stood looking down the trail of bodies with a frown.
"Sammy. I don't think it was a Medusa. They would be in a heap, all hit at once, and frozen in fear, if it was. It's gotta be something else." Sam nodded in absent agreement. "But what?"