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Galavant and Sid were on a quest. Sid did not, at present, quite remember for whom or for what it was, but he had taken copious notes from the king who had dispatched them, and there were tucked away safely in his saddle bag. It was something about rescuing someone, or maybe about slaying something else. Sid really just had to look up their destination every day or so; the rest of these things always made themselves clear when they arrived. Damsel, distress, you know the rest. All Galavant really needed to do was show up and draw his sword.
But that was in the future. For now, Galavant’s sword was packed in his bag, swaddled carefully by Sid in the 12th century’s finest rust-proof wrapping. It had been packed there for days as Galavant and Sid rode on through the woods.
On the third day as night began to fall they found their horses (and buttocks) in dire need of rest. They came upon a clearing in the forest, and Sid descended from his horse to begin to set up camp. But before he had even unbuckled his saddle bag, Sid made out a signpost in the low light. It was painted with ornate, blocky capitals:
WANTED: BOARDERS
OUTLAW FLATS INN
1 MILE
Well, that was that. They would stay at the inn that night—even some place that housed outlaws had to beat the forest floor. Sid got back on his horse, and they rode another mile west in the twilight.
As they rode on, the soft dirt path gave way to harder, dustier terrain, and the damp, heavy air of the forest began to dry. Sid began to sweat, even as the sun retreated beneath the horizon.
It was so dark when they reached Outlaw Flats that all they could see of the town was the inn, illuminated by two lanterns in the front window. There was a strong smell of horse manure, and straw beneath their feet. Sid began to tie up their horses, and Galavant went inside to see about getting them a room.
Sid was tired to the bone, but he attacked the task at hand with fervor. He splashed himself twice watering their horses, once when he didn’t get out of the way of the pump and again when water sloshed over the side in his hurry across the stable. He unbuckled only the most crucial bags and hefted them over his shoulder. The faster he finished, the sooner he could be inside and asleep.
The doors swung shut behind him, and Sid wiped his feet on the rug in front of the door and then just stood there, taking it all in. The ground floor of the inn was centered around a bar, all dark panelled wood, where a few men sat wearing large hats and smoking cigars. To Sid’s right was a fireplace, where a fire barely clung to life, logs glowing a resilient orange. Several men sat at a table in the corner, drinking and playing cards. The men seemed relaxed enough, but there was a palpable tension in the room, like its delicate balance could be interrupted at any moment.
It put Sid on edge. He shifted the bags on his shoulder and joined Galavant where he was talking to a man behind the bar, presumably arranging for their lodgings. The light was low, and the man seemed to sink further into the shadows than Sid imagined to be strictly necessary, such that Sid could barely make out his face.
Money was tight, as it often was between quest windfalls, but it seemed that Galavant had persuaded the innkeeper to let them pay in the morning. The man leaned towards Galavant and into the light, revealing shoulder-length, dirty-blond hair and a jagged scar that cut across his cheek. “You see to it that you don’t skip town.”
“We wouldn’t dream of it,” Galavant said. He didn’t even flinch, although they had totalled up their remaining silver that morning, and Sid couldn’t imagine any inn that would be quite that cheap, even one that accepted outlaws.
The innkeeper tilted his hat back and began to gnaw on a corncob pipe. Sid couldn’t see where he’d produced it from, and it was made further strange by the fact that corn wouldn’t be imported for another two hundred-odd years.
“Train’s comin’ through tomorrow, you catch my drift.”
Sid didn’t know what a train was, but if the innkeeper’s voice was anything to go by, he didn’t want to find out. Hopefully they would have already skipped town by the time it arrived.
If the innkeeper realized they had no idea what he was talking about, he didn’t let on. He just gnawed and gnawed, and Sid wondered if they were going to have to sleep in the woods that night after all.
But then the innkeeper produced a brass key from wherever he’d gotten the pipe, and that was that. Sid and Galavant were so tired they practically stumbled upstairs and to bed.
---
Sid blinked in the early morning light and found himself looking out at the desert. The air was a kind of crisp cool that he wasn’t sure if he’d ever felt before, and strange, spiky plants shot up from the gentle hills of sand that extended as far as the eye could see, a green army frozen mid-march. Sid made to rub his eyes, wondering if there was any more he could make out in the distance, but found his arms bound to his sides.
Oh. So this wasn’t the view out the window of their room. Sid had gone to sleep in a soft bed made of straw and containing only minimal bugs, and awoken outdoors, stiff and tied down to the train tracks.
Well, he was a man of the world. Sid had been around the maypole a few times, thank you very much. In his experienced opinion, there was only one thing to say.
“Help!”
It was only a few more cries until Galavant came running over a hill, panting and looking over his shoulder. “Sid!” He grinned broadly and put one foot up on a rock, apparently satisfied that he wasn’t being pursued, and gazed down at Sid. “Remember last month when I wanted to tie you up to practice my rescuing skills, and you said no? Bet you’re regretting that right now.”
Sid squirmed on the tracks. “Galavant! Now is not the time!” He felt a renewed sympathy for the damsels in distress often on the other side of Galavant’s pre-rescue banter. “What happened? Who did this to me?”
“Ah, that would be the innkeeper.”
“What? Why?”
“Well, I asked him if it would be alright if we paid for our room in the morning, and he said, fine”—Galavant then put on the worst American accent that would be heard this side of the Atlantic for several centuries— “But I’ll need some collateral, pardner.”
Sid groaned. “And I was the collateral?”
“You were the collateral, Sid.” Galavant bent down to pat Sid on the shoulder. “A knight couldn’t ask for a better squire.”
Normally, Sid’s heart would have swelled with pride at those words. Instead, he groaned again and squirmed beneath the ropes. A rock was digging into his back. “Couldn’t you be the collateral for once?”
“Aw, don’t be like that, Sid. I didn’t think he’d actually do it. But he did say”—here the accent made its valiant return—“That’s how we do things out west.”
“Out west? West of where?”
Then a horn sounded, and both of them looked west. A figure chugged into view, puffing black smoke into the morning air and making steady progress towards them. “The train!” Sid cried, for that was what it had to be. A man hung out of the first car, looking as if he was in charge of the controls—either he didn’t see Sid and wouldn’t until it was too late, or he knew exactly what lay, tied to the tracks, in front of him, and just didn’t care. Either way, Sid was going to end up a squire pancake. He’d had a dream about that once, actually, but it had involved a lot more maple syrup.
Galavant jumped down from the rock and began to attack the rope with his sword. It was nearly as thick as Sid’s wrist, and it was slow going. Galavant had sawed maybe quarter of the way through, and the train kept chugging along. Sid squeezed his eyes closed, bracing himself. If only there was some way to slow down time.
“Galavant!” Sid yelled, for now the sound of the oncoming train was so loud that he had to yell to be heard. “Keep at it, but—sing something!”
“What are you talking about?” Galavant yelled back. “Sing something?”
Sid looked over his shoulder and whimpered. Hadn’t he always imagined he’d die by Galavant’s side? Every little boy who wanted to be a squire when he grew up dreamed of it: following their knight into battle, with him until the bloody end. But no one ever told stories about majestic knights getting hit by trains. In fact, Sid had never even heard of a train before arriving in Outlaw Flats. So it wasn’t really cowardice, trying to get out of this death. He was still willing to die for Galavant—that was in his employment contract, after all—but not today.
“I have to do everything myself around here,” Sid muttered, and took a deep breath.
It was not, Sid would freely admit after the fact, his best performance. The rhyme scheme was all over the place, the choreography was limited to wriggling on the ground, and Sid couldn’t properly fill his lungs with air to really belt, but it worked—Galavant’s sawing sped up and the train slowed down and before Sid knew it, he was free.
Galavant shoved away the ropes and pulled Sid with him as he rolled off the tracks, shielding him from the considerable cloud of dust kicked up by the train as it sped past, sounding its horn again. This was adventure, wasn’t it? Not mortal peril itself but the moment after, freshly escaped from the dragon’s claws, breathing hard and shaking all over—this was when he felt the most alive.
Galavant clapped Sid on the back, hard enough to shake dust out of his hair, and Sid could feel him shaking too, flush with this close call. He left his hand there for a moment, fingers digging into Sid’s shoulder, and then he pulled Sid to his side. “You’re more than collateral, you know that, Sid?”
He did know, but it was nice to be told. Sid also knew that Galavant had such an inflated sense of ego that nothing could ever be his fault. It wasn’t often that he’d say something like this, which could be possibly construed as an apology.
Sid let himself be pulled close to Galavant’s side. For all he complained about Galavant, for all Galavant moaned and groaned and got them into danger—there were worse knights to be a squire for. Sid lifted his head and looked up at Galavant. There was dust in his eyebrows, and in his beard.
“You—” Sid said, but that was all he got out before they heard footsteps coming from the town. They scrambled to their feet to find the innkeeper running after them, yelling and brandishing a piece of metal that glinted in the sun. Sid didn’t want to stick around and see what it was for.
They ran for their lives, stumbling over the dry, cracked ground and laughing all the way. Two near-death experiences before breakfast, and there was no one Sid would rather do it with.
Next time, Sid thought as mounted his horse. They took off at a gallop, heading across the desert and back into the thick woods they had come from. Something had been interrupted on the side of the train tracks, something more than merely basking in the afterglow of their escape. Maybe not this quest, or the next—but it couldn’t be too long before he and Galavant got themselves into another life or death situation. They would feel that wonderful lightness again, and they would pick up where they’d left off. Sid didn’t know what he had been about to say, but he felt sure he would figure it out next time. Being Galavant’s squire, there was no doubt about it: there would definitely be a next time.