Luckily his hair was short. Lord Conrad Weller thought from the depths of his soul, as he secretly observed his half-brother riding a shaky horse next to him. With each step, fine grains of sand trickled down Wolfram"s blond hair which had become dull with dust.

No wonder...

When they had escaped from the sand bear"s lair through an air hole, they no longer knew whether they breathed in air or sand. Almost all had survived the quicksand adventure without a scratch. They owed this to the grace of the Original King.

A soldier from Lord von Voltaire"s squad came galloping up. Conrad recognized him as the second or third son of a merchant from the south coast. He was not exactly the type of warriors who would gain utmost honor, but he had enough talent to command a squad. Gwendal had taken him as his adjutant. Lord Weller tried to recall his name.

"I came to report to you, Your Excellency!"

"I"m listening."

"I"ve checked both horses and riders. Some soldiers have suffered burns from the saliva of the sand bears, but they are all minor injuries. None of them is in a critical condition. The horses, however..."

"What about the horses?"

"We now have two horses extra."

"Two more?"

The adjutant scratched his recently grown mustache awkwardly.

Boyd, thought Conrad. His name was Boyd. He was the second son of the wealthy merchant family Boyd.

"Probably the bear kept the horses in its lair as stock for later. They must have joined in with our horses when Your Excellency defeated the beast."

"All right, we should make use of them then. Let them bear a part of our loads. Move some baggage from the tired horses to the new ones."

"Yes, Sir! And there is one more thing..."

"I"m listening..."

"We have a deserter in our ranks."

Conrad frowned and involuntarily lowered his voice.

"Be careful what you say. We are not at war. We won"t treat anyone as a deserter. Let"s just say the man has left the troop. And? Who is it?"

"It"s Ryan from your unit. We have tried to stop him, but he would not listen. He could only stammer incoherently. He had found his fellow sufferer, and he would one day see Your Excellency again in Hildyaard. Can you understand what that"s all about?"

Ryan was known as a fanatical animal lover. He probably wanted to stay with the severely injured sand bear and tame him. He would be the first one ever to tame and train a sand bear.

"Um ... No, but that"s okay. There is no need to search for him. I regret that you had to give such an unpleasant report, Boyd. Send two men to the vanguard of the troop. You are now responsible for the security of the expedition."

After the soldier had ridden on to carry out the order, Conrad turned to his neighbor. The youngest brother stared frowning at the ground.

"Come, don"t be so depressed."

"Why can"t I?"

"Spit out the sand in your mouth first."

"Shut up! You don"t understand! Yuri is traveling with my brother ... With my brother! "

"Yeah, and? What is the problem? Are you jealous? Since you"re officially his fiancé, you should probably trust him a little more."

"You know yourself how smitten Gwendal is with everything cute! And Yuri is a d.a.m.n flirty lad. He is not even aware of it himself! "

"And what do you think would..."

Conrad meant to ask how intimate those two could be for Wolfram to consider it a breach of fidelity, but he changed his mind and hastily broke off his question with a cough.

"All that trouble is because of you! I would have come out of the trap on my own. There was no need at all for you to follow me! Do you really have so little faith in my sword?"

"What nonsense," Conrad tried to pacify the fuming blond and, thanks to a century of life experience, found his refres.h.i.+ng smile again. "I know you"re an excellent swordsman. I was only thinking about my first encounter with a sand bear. I got into trouble because I did not know his weaknesses. I wanted to show you what it takes. But would you really feel better if I had gone with the other two?"

Wolfram furrowed his brow.

"Just think. Yuri, Gwen and I, the three of us traveling together."

"Right. I"d like it even less!"

"Why haven"t you guys understood this yet?! What"s so hard about it? A fist is a stone, a flat hand is paper, and two fingers are scissors. The stone loses to the paper, which can be cut up by the scissors, and the scissors would break on the stone, so it loses there. Got it?"

"But a crab has scissors in its claws that would never be able to cut paper," argued the girl.

"Paper would be likely to rip if you wrapped a stone in it," observed Gwendal.

"You two are making me crazy! I"ve already explained it too many times, dammit!"

With the very first objection I have ever made at a wedding, I had apparently captured the heart of the young bride, so that she begged me to run away with her. The wedding guests did not interpret that to be the bride"s idea -- man, would you believe it, they blamed us for forcefully abducting the bride. What complete nonsense!

Gwendal and I already were considered to be an illegally eloped pair, and had already been put in chains. Now in addition to that, kidnapping had been added to our criminal record. So actually, we had advanced up a level as criminals -- not that that was particularly flattering.

"Why me!? We haven"t even done anything wrong!" I moaned.

To hide a tree, you need a forest -- to hide a man, you need a crowd. Taking this motto to heart, we ran away to the market square, and thanks to our bundle we were perceived to be customers. [T/N: Gwendal and Yuuri wrapped a blanket around their chain, so it looks like they are carrying a heavy bundle between them]

We were approached by a woman hawking some suspicious looking purple fruit, and by a child who held up a brown frog with long legs. Both objects were purported to have a v.i.a.g.r.a-like effect. Just fantastic!

To be truly safe from our pursuers, we needed to find a quiet place to put together a plan for what we were going to do next. In the movies, when the criminals seek refuge in a church, they always find a helpful priest to hide them under a table or some other convenient furniture, but the places of wors.h.i.+p in this country had already done poorly by us twice.

I made the following suggestion: Whoever loses at "Rock, Paper, Scissors" must decide where our hiding place should be. But we never got that far, because those two couldn"t manage to comprehend the game.

"Okay, fine, we"ll just forget that," I finally said, resigned. "Gwendal, you decide. Where should we hide?"

"No, you decide!"

"Dammit, don"t do this to me! You get to decide! So come on, where?"

"I don"t want to get an earful from you later when you don"t like it! You decide!"

"You two are so cute!"

"What the heck is cute about this!" we roared at the bride together, as if from one throat.

We"d been sitting at the front of a pickle store for some time, like gang members more than anything, when a short, bald man approached us. Since he didn"t have a sus.h.i.+ haircut, he didn"t seem to be a soldier or one of our pursuers.

"Peepee?" he asked us with a rough voice that would have stood him well at the auctions in the market halls at Tsukiji.

Since I didn"t have to use the toilet, I was about to decline, when Gwendal spoke up and said, "Yes, peepee."

"What? You never said that you had to..."

"Me too, peepee."

G.o.d in heaven, the bride too?! Had it built up in her during all that excitement at the church? She and Gwendal made deadly serious faces.

"Forgive me, I"m really sorry, people! Man, you could have just said something, then we could have taken a potty break long before now!"

The man indicated for us to follow him with a wiggle of his pointer finger. Since Gwendal went on ahead with long strides, I was dragged along. The girl gasped as she saw the chain that flashed out from under the blanket, but she ended up following us as well.

The man"s bald head teetered back and forth as he hobbled on. Probably he had a bad leg, I thought. We made turn after turn in the labyrinth of countless narrow alleyways.

So much effort, just to find a toilet!

After we"d pa.s.sed a bunch of identical looking houses, the bald man knocked on a light brown door. A child"s face peeked out from behind the door -- he looked to be about six years old.

"We"ve got guests," said the man.

After the young boy had ushered us in, he closed the door quickly and turned the key. Then he lowered the blinds on the windows, too. We were being locked in!

On an old but st.u.r.dy-looking table, there stood an empty vase. But where in the world was the toilet?

"I"m Shas, and this is my grandson Jilda." The grandfather had a crotchety face, but Jilda looked extremely cute with his light brown, curly hair and blue eyes. The two looked absolutely nothing alike.

"One of you is without doubt a demon," said Shas. "But what does a bride want with an eloped couple?"

"So it"s true after all! I knew it!" exclaimed the girl.

"No, dammit!" How often did I have to say it, to h.e.l.l with it all!

"The blood of the demons also runs in your grandson," said Gwendal quietly to Shas.

"That"s right. During the civil war, my only daughter fell in love with a demon who traveled from place to place as a messenger. He was a respectable, decent fellow. I would have liked to have him for a son-in-law, but then something happened to him on his travels. My daughter was sent to a labor camp, and my grandson was born there. Another demon brought me the newborn child. After that, I decided to help the demons whenever I can. There"s not a lot I can do for you, but look at it as thanks for my grandson."

"I understand, that"s why you said "peepee"," Gwendal said.

"That"s right! You two wanted to find a bathroom! Why haven"t you gone, then? It"s not healthy to hold back for so long!"

Gwendal shot me an ice cold glare. ""Peepee" is a slang term for brother."

Aha. And why didn"t anyone tell me that before?

"This other demon has been here a few times since, to check on us. He even offered to take us to Jilda"s father"s homeland, if I should notice that Jilda is growing too much more slowly than the other children. If the demon blood in him is strong, then he can expect a long life, but also slower physical development. Because of that, he might be bullied by the other children. Despite his dignified and calm speech, this guy was a really quick thinker. He looked a little like you, actually."

I pulled at Gwendal via the chain. "Why were the demons involved if it was a civil war in this country?"

"Because of the decaying corpses," he growled in an extremely unfriendly voice, and then was silent.

"Could you be a little more explicit?"

The girl took up the explanation. "You see, it happened like this: The messengers of the demon folk brought us the remains of the soldiers that had fallen at distant borders. When I was a child, I was told that these people were devils who robbed the dead bodies. But that was wrong. Now I know that the demons are good people." The bride smiled as she reached the end of her speech, and her smile looked to be completely honest.

For the second time, I took a closer look at the girl. I discovered that she actually did look like a girl, in that everything about her was small and thin. She had a deep tan from the sun, red-brown hair and lively eyes of the same color, that were full of feeling and expression. In comparison to the female demons of the empire, she had a rather small snub nose, and large ears. She looked average through and through, and possessed not a single hint of s.e.x appeal.

"Thanks for the explanation, um... Ms. Bride," I said.

"My name is Nicola. I"m not a bride any more," said the girl and smiled again.

She had a d.a.m.n sweet smile, and something in her reminded me of a player at the shortstop position in softball. The midsummer sun and a sunvisor would look good on her.

"N-n-n-n-nice to m-m-m-meet you, Nicola, I"m Yu-yu-yu-yuuri." I could feel myself just about to fall head over heels in love with her.

"Nice to meet you too, Yu-yu-yu-yuuri."

Dammit!

Nicola tilted her head to the side like a little bird. "Won"t you introduce me to your sweetheart?"

"That is not my sweetheart!"

"But of course he is, you two have eloped together. Despite all the resistance from your friends and family, and --"

"Why doesn"t anyone ever listen to me?! I"m engaged to his younger brother!" Oh G.o.d, had I lost it completely? My face began to burn, the veins at my temples filled with blood...

Gwendal pulled a yellowed paper from his s.h.i.+rt. "Near the border, we were mistaken for this couple here," he said.

In front of us lay one of those silly drawings, the unbelievable masterwork of a kindergartner who"d been allowed to run wild with his crayons for the first time.

Nicola"s smile transformed immediately into shock. "That"s me!" she exclaimed.

Not in this lifetime! That was Charlie Brown, nothing more! "Nonsense, that can"t be you. Even if it were, then who is this other guy supposed to be?"

"That"s Hube and me, one month ago."

This name rang a bell.

Gwendal slowly crossed his arms over his chest. It was accompanied by the sound of clanking metal, and my left arm was dragged upwards, too.

"Surely you don"t mean Gegenhuber Griesela?" asked Gwendal.

Nicola nodded. "His hair and eye color is a little different, but at first glance you two do look alike, with your grumpy dispositions. But actually, Hube is a really dear man. Oh, my Hube..." sighed Nicola and turned her gaze down to the floor.

Then her tears rolled down her knee. They"d fallen directly out of her eyes, without touching her cheek or chin.

"I miss him so much," sobbed the girl.

"Come now, don"t cry," I said, somewhat confused. "If you"d eloped with Gegenhuber, then why did you want to marry that soldier back there?"

I stretched my hand out to console Nicola, but I couldn"t reach, the chain was too short.

"I"m going to break the d.a.m.n fool"s neck!" rumbled Gwendal with a growl in his voice.

I didn"t have the courage to ask who he was talking about.

(This translation was originally posted here. Please do not repost elsewhere.)