Wolf sighed, defeated. "I know why Hawk went to war--his craze for flying drove him. But I don't understand why you're doing this."

"For the same reason you charged up San Juan Hill with the Rough Riders in '98," Ivan said. "It's our country and we mean to fight for it, each in our own way."

Arno's golden eyes held Wolf's. "You've had your share of excitement," he said, "while Ivan and I have stayed home and been good boys all our lives. Don't you think we deserve at least one great adventure?"

Chapter 17.

Near dawn on September 12, 1918, Captain Ivan Volek glanced at the gray skies, sneezing as he cursed the rain. With visibility so poor, the landmark rise of Montsec, the thousand or more foot butte the U. S. First Army had advanced toward for two days, was hidden. As he listened to the booming of the artillery, Ivan checked his watch. Almost time.

The St. Mihiel salient was mostly rough and broken country, easy to lose your bearing in. Salient was a word he'd never used until he landed in France as a green first lieutenant. He'd soon learned, among other battle terminology, that it meant the projection of the army toward enemy lines. This salient was particularly nasty in wet weather when the low spots became mucky swamps, difficult to cross and breeding squadrons of mosquitos.

Ivan knew General Pershing was determined this all-American offensive would succeed, not only to push the Boche back into Germany, but to justify Blackjack's insistence that U.S. troops be allowed to go into battle as a unit. Up until now they'd been spread among the other armies.

As soon as they pushed on this morning, Blackjack promised air cover, French and British as well as American. Ivan wondered if Hawk would be up there--the kid was already an ace, racking up six victories over the Hun, the last he'd heard. He was proud of Hawk but he didn't envy him. While it was true there was no mud, mosquitos or poison gas up in the air, Ivan preferred keeping both feet on the ground. Another glance at his watch brought him to full attention. Five-thirty. Time to jump, thank God. Waiting while listening to that buster of artillery fire was worse than fighting.

In the gray dawn, in the seconds before he led his men from the trenches, a surge of fear mixed with anticipation flooded through him. Would he live to see another dawn? His unit advanced along what he'd been told was the southern face of the salient, through mud and barbed wire. Enemy rifle fire was sporadic and he didn't see a single live target. He was beginning to wonder if the Boche had retreated when the crack of rifles increased, accompanied by the tac-tac-tac of a machine gun. They'd reached the enemy's front line.

Unlike Belleau Wood, where the Germans had fought doggedly, refusing to give an inch, enemy soldiers began pouring out of their trenches in swarms, hands in the air.

By evening, Ivan's division had captured three war-torn villages and mopped up most of the remaining pockets of resistance with a minimum of casualties. As they bivouacked for the night, Ivan, sneezing, his throat raw, head throbbing, told himself he'd feel better in the morning.

An explosion woke him from feverish dreams. He sprang to his feet, head swimming. "What is it?" he demanded.

"Damn Boche tossed a fucking potato masher into camp, sir," Sergeant Prater told him. "Sentry nailed him, but the grenade got a couple of the men. They need help bad."

Ivan took one glance at the mangled soldiers and nodded. The nearest advanced dressing station was over a mile away, in a hamlet near Thiancourt, one of the captured villages. "Get a truck started," he ordered, "I'll drive them over." "Begging the captain's pardon," Sergeant Prater said, "but you look like hell. Sir."

Ivan nodded. He felt like hell. "Maybe the medics can fix me up while they're at it."

"In that case, sir, I'll get the truck."

The two men were loaded into the back of the truck with a young corporal to watch over them. Or, more likely, Ivan decided, to keep an eye on him--no doubt on the sergeant's orders. Prater was a good man.

By the time he reached the dressing station, Ivan was glad the corporal was along because he wasn't too sure he'd be able to drive the truck back. The injured soldiers were unloaded and carried into the church, one of the few buildings still standing in the tiny village. Ivan slumped into a pew and waited to speak to the harried doctor.

"You've got influenza," the doctor said when he finally got around to taking a look at Ivan. "Better stay here--you won't be any use to your unit for a week or so. I'll give you a couple of aspirin for the fever--not much else we can do for the flu."

The corporal drove off, leaving Ivan wrapped in a blanket and stretched out on one of the pews, alternately shivering and burning up with fever.

We look alike, Arno and I but we're not, he thought. If I was Arno I wouldn't be sick. Shifters throw off illness as easily as a lady shrugs off her evening cape at the opera. Shifters heal faster than anyone else besides being able to influence men and attract women. No one ever sees me first or talks to me first--it's always Arno. I love him, he's my twin, but sometimes I wish I'd been the shifter.

How is he? I haven't heard from him since I landed in France. We've never been apart this long in all our lives. God how I miss him....

He walked through a forest of burned and broken trees, trees destroyed by war. Dead men lay rotting among the ruined trees and Ivan paused by each, fearing to see a familiar face. He found no one he knew. The dead grew fewer and then there were none but the blackened trees went on and on.

No birds sang, no squirrels leaped, chattering, from tree to tree. This was a silent woods, a dead woods. War had killed it. Men had killed it. What did trees matter when there were kingdoms to be won?

He was lost in a dead forest and he knew there was no way out, that he was doomed to wander through the shattered trees forever.

His destiny was the forest's destiny--unless he could bring life back to the forest, he was doomed. There was a way he could save himself and the trees as well but he couldn't do it without Arno. He needed his twin.

"Arno!" he called. "Arno, where are you?"

No one answered.

He must find his brother. Now....

Ivan struggled to his feet, almost falling as they tangled in the blanket. Stumbling, lurching, he staggered past the altar and through a door behind the nave into the dark and rainy night.

Griselda Dachen rose from the cot where she'd tried unsuccessfully to sleep and walked through the darkness to the table that contained one of the few possessions from her past. Thank God her mother's stepsister had taught her the French tongue as a child, otherwise she might well be dead by now, a despised German in a country at war with Germans.

A hated Boche. She, who was only half German. Her mother had been half-French, half-Gypsy, which accounted for Griselda's dark complexion and hair. Her eyes, though, were blue, a legacy from her despised father. She'd never gotten on well with him and the situation grew worse after her mother died. She'd left home at sixteen and made her own way in the world.

She'd been doing quite well telling fortunes in one of the better Paris cafes when the war broke out. Unfortunately she'd been using her own unmistakably German name--Dachen. The proprietor had all but thrown her out. She'd left the city, hoping to stay with her aunt but the aunt had sailed to Montreal to live with friends in Canada until the war was over.

Griselda, abandoning her last name, had tried her luck in small towns, making enough to get by. It hadn't been too bad until she was suddenly caught in the fighting. At the moment it seemed impossible to escape from the war zone. Sitting by the table in the darkness, she felt for the silk velvet cover of the crystal ball that had been her mother's--her most precious possession. It was after midnight; today was the thirteenth of September. Her birthday. Should she look?

Griselda smiled wryly. All day the big guns had boomed, men had died, armies had advanced and retreated. This village, in German hands yesterday morning, was now occupied by American soldiers. Who knew whether she'd be alive or dead by the time this new day was ended?

How ridiculous it seemed to scan the crystal ball to try to see the face of her true love.

"Each year on the morning of your birthday," her mother had told her when she was thirteen, "in the darkness before the sun rises you must look into the crystal ball. Each year, until a man's face appears. This man will be your true love."

Her mother had died the following summer. Since then, Griselda had never missed a year. First from curiosity, later because it was a way to remember her mother. War or no war, why should she miss this year?

She lifted the silk cover from the crystal and gently caressed its cool roundness. Taking her hands away, she stared into the darkness toward the ball, unable to see even its outline in the pitch black. If this were like every other year, nothing would happen. She sighed. Twenty-seven years old, many men, but no true love.

Still, as the fighting today in and about what remained of the village reminded her, there were worse things in life than not finding one's true love.

A faint glow in the darkness startled her. For a moment she didn't realize it was the crystal and, when she did, she was wonderstruck. Though during the day she sometimes saw what was to come within the crystal, never before had it glowed in the dark.

A face swam hazily into view, a man's face--no, two men's faces--no, one. Griselda blinked, trying to clear her vision. A man's face. Dark wavy hair. Eyes the color of amber. Bold features. But the face kept blurring into two. Before fading entirely away, the eyes seemed to change, to grow feral and then even the glow disappeared.

Shaken, she clutched the edge of the table. Her true love? Closing her eyes, she sought her inner center where peace always reigned. Finally calm, she covered the crystal and rose from the chair, only to grab onto its back as pain stabbed into her chest.

Hurts to breathe. Dizzy. Can't go on. Must. Where is he? Must find him....

Griselda fought the feelings and thoughts pouring into her mind and her body. This hadn't happened to her in years, not since her mother lay dying and she'd suddenly felt every painful breath her mother took and knew how bitterly her mother resented being ill. It had been a terrible experience, one she never wanted to repeat.

Somehow she knew that this time it was a man who forced her to feel what he felt. Who was he? Where was he?

As if compelled by a power outside herself, Griselda groped her way toward the door and unbolted it, passed through a hall to a back door that hung askew. Leaving the safety of her room with soldiers nearby was dangerous and she hesitated at the door before going on. A misty rain slicked the stone doorstep, cool under her bare feet.

The darkness outside wasn't quite as intense as that inside her room. Something lay sprawled in the mud near her door. A man. The one she'd felt in her mind?

Taking a deep breath, Griselda edged toward him and crouched to gingerly touch his head. Fiery hot. Feverish. He might die if she left him here. So many soldiers had died--what was one more? He was none of her concern.

"Mama, I'm sick," he mumbled.

She'd learned enough English to understand what he said and his words disarmed her completely.

She shook his shoulder. "Get up," she ordered. "Up!" "Can't."

"Yes you can. I'll help you."

With agonizing slowness he managed to push himself onto his hands and knees. Urging him along, half-dragging him when he stopped crawling, Griselda hauled him into the room she'd taken over as hers, in a house left vacant by the fighting. He collapsed on the floor and she locked the door again.

Lighting her precious stub of a candle, she looked him over. A big man, bearded, wearing a wet and muddy captain's uniform. Kneeling, with great effort she rolled him onto his back and began undressing him. Whatever his sickness, wet clothes would surely make him worse. As she struggled to get his jacket off, he opened dazed eyes. She gasped and rocked back on her heels. Amber eyes.

Was he the man she'd seen in her crystal ball? With the beard covering much of his face she wasn't completely certain but she thought it likely.

"You're sick," she told him.

"Flu," he mumbled as his eyes drooped shut.

She'd had the flu last month when the epidemic swept through the Lorraine Valley. She might have died of starvation if an old farm woman hadn't nursed her. Later the poor old lady had been killed when a mortar shell demolished her cottage.

His undergarments felt fairly dry so she left them on. Covering him with her extra blanket, she slid her one and only pillow under his head. The floor was no hospital bed but she'd do the best she could for him. Griselda smiled wryly. For her true love. Such as he was.

When it grew light she thought of going to the church and telling the medics at the dressing station that he was in her room. After consideration, she changed her mind. He needed rest and someone to dribble soup and fluids down his throat--she had nothing else to do but take care of him while the medics at the dressing station were understaffed and overworked. If she told them the captain was here, they'd insist on taking him away. She felt a certain proprietary interest in him.

Hadn't she seen him in the crystal ball? Hadn't she rescued him? So, she'd nurse him until he was well enough to return to war.

On the following day she learned his name was Ivan. By the third day he was lucid enough to remember her name. Four days later, he was able to sit up and feed himself, though still too weak to walk alone to the shattered room of the house that they used for a latrine.

Sickness didn't destroy his natural attractiveness nor his inherent cheerfulness and courtesy. Griselda quite liked him. In no way did he resemble her despised father, who'd also been a soldier. Still was one, as far as she knew, unless he'd died in the fighting.

When talking to each other, they spoke a mixture of English and French-his French was on a par with her limited English.

"I've been a lot of trouble to you," he told her on the evening of the fifth day. "I've taken all your time, used up most of your food--"

"I'm glad to share. As for my time--" She shrugged. "In war, what is time?"

"Time given freely to another is always a gracious gift. I appreciate yours."

Griselda smiled. "I've no one else to donate my time to. Besides, who else could take care of you?"

"Tomorrow I'll be strong enough to find my unit and rustle up some supplies for you."

She shook her head. "You need a few more days to recuperate. And your unit is gone with the rest of the American soldiers. They moved out two days ago. Only a few French poilus remain to occupy the village."

Ivan surged to his feet. "Gone?" He started for the door, staggered and leaned against the wall to keep from falling. He was surprised they'd left without him. On second thought he realized why he hadn't been missed. Sergeant Prater must have believed he was with the medics, while the medics would think he'd rejoined his unit.

"See how weak you are?" Griselda scolded. "Come, rest." "Where did the Americans go?" He slid down the wall until he sat on the floor.

"To the Argonne, is the rumor. And it is almost certainly true. You aren't yet strong enough to fight, c'est ne pas?"

Ivan frowned. He'd been sure Pershing would drive on east toward Metz. Instead he'd shifted his troops to the north. The Argonne terrain was far nastier than here, and the German fortifications there formidable. It would be Belleau Wood all over again, only worse. Griselda was right, a man whose head spun every time he stood on his feet was in no shape to face the enemy. At the moment he couldn't even get to the Argonne, much less fight.

It was another week before he'd regained enough strength to feel confident he wouldn't collapse unexpectedly. By then he'd come to realize Griselda was not only attractive, she was the woman he'd always wanted and never found. Most of the women he'd met preferred Arno and he was damned if he'd settle for being second choice. He didn't exactly blame his twin--Arno couldn't help his attraction for women any more than he could help being a shifter--but he resented it. "Don't you have anyone in France?" he asked Griselda on the evening before he planned to leave. The persistent cold rain kept them inside the house but they'd gone into what had been the main living room of the house, lit a fire in the fireplace and sat side by side on a blanket in a sheltered inglenook where the roof didn't leak too badly.

She shook her head. "No one."

"You've spoken of an aunt in Montreal," he persisted. "Are there no other relatives?"

"I have a father," she admitted. "If he still lives. I really don't care whether he's alive or dead." When he didn't immediately respond, she added, "I suppose you think that's heartless."

"You're not heartless."

"My father is. Have you ever read Nietzsche?"

"I recognize the name but I'm no philosopher."

"My father loves to quote him. 'Man is created for war, and women for the pleasure of the warrior,' is one of his favorites." Her voice was laced with scorn.

Ivan, who'd been about to put an arm around her shoulders, held. "I, uh, can't say I agree," he mumbled. "Oh, you're nothing like my father. Nothing at all. Otherwise I wouldn't have taken care of you."

"But how do you survive all alone in this war-torn countryside?"

Griselda slanted him a secret smile. "Among other things, I tell fortunes," she said. "Give me your hand, I'll tell yours."

Ivan held out his right hand, she took it and turned the palm up. Examining his palm in the firelight took her so much time he began to fidget. Close as she was, her woman's scent tantalized him. Didn't she realize how difficult it was to keep from pulling her into his arms and kissing her? "I'm confused," she confessed. "Your lines all seem to be doubled."

Ivan chuckled. "You are good at fortunes. I have a twin."

Griselda's eyes widened. "Two of you." She spoke as though to herself. "Two. Ah, I see." She looked at him. "Where is your twin?"

"I wish I knew. Somewhere in France--Arno's in the Ambulance Corps." Damn it, he'd had enough of talk--he needed to hold her. Turning his hand so he grasped hers, he pulled her closer and kissed her.

Her lips were warm under his, her body soft when he wrapped his arms around her. She didn't stiffen in his embrace or reject his kiss but she didn't respond, either. For long moments, caught in his own desire, he paid no attention. Finally becoming aware of her lack of passion, he released her reluctantly.

Placing a hand to either side of her face, he looked into her eyes, their blue reflecting the fire's flames.

"I'm in love with you," he said softly.

"No. You want me, perhaps, but wanting isn't love." "And you?"

"I like you." Her warm breath caressed his face. "I am not in love."

Ivan dropped his hands and took a deep breath, trying to conceal his disappointment. "I won't ask if you want me because I can tell you don't."