The Templar's Curse by Sarwat Chadda (classic books to read TXT) 📕

about, but you’re a danger to the order and that, my girl, is my life you’re messing with. I have given everything to the Templars, and I’ll be damned if I’ll see it destroyed by the likes of you.”

Look at him, he’s ready to explode. What did I ever do to make him like this?

He was old, and tough and there were no old and bold Templars except Gwaine and yet she couldn’t respect him. He was Seneschal, second in command, and he’d taught her dad. Hell, he’d taught her back at the beginning. History and Arabic. Both of them had hated every second of it but that had only made Billi work harder. She’d been fluent within a year and thought that would be that, but then her dad had got Gwaine to teach her Hebrew too. There’d been no escape.

But now it was too late for either of them to turn back. They represented the opposites within the order. Gwaine wanted everything to be how it had been back at the beginning. He wanted the Templars to be just like the original founders at the beginning of the 12th century but didn’t understand why that wouldn’t work. There was no going back to some mythic, Golden Age. There was only one way for the Order to go, and that was relentlessly forward. And that, whether she liked it or not, was Billi, Mordred, Bors and the squires.

Bors was Gwaine’s nephew, but Bors was a vicious brute. You aimed him at the enemy and then just got the hell out of the way. But he wasn’t a leader. The squires didn’t look to him, they looked to Billi.

And that terrified Gwaine.

He’d seen into the future and found Billi. That’s why he wanted to turn back the clock nine hundred years.

“You want my help?” asked Gwaine. “There’s a simple way to get it. The oldest way there is to decide who’s right, and who isn’t. Trial by combat.”

“You’re serious?”

Gwaine cracked his knuckles, each one noisily after the other.

He’s serious.

Gwaine had to be sixty, minimum. There wasn’t much to him, sinewy muscle and leathery skin covered with five decades’ worth of scars. She’d watched him countless times. She’d taken lessons off him. He’d shown her how to punch properly.

She was taller with longer reach and over forty years younger. He didn’t even have much of a weight advantage.

You can have him, SanGreal.

Billi picked up a pair of gloves for herself. “I win and you’ll help me find Ivan?”

“I win and you leave the Bogatyrs to deal with their man by themselves.”

The gloves were short, the type used nowadays in MMA. Gwaine was an old-school bare knuckle brawler. He had a jaw made of stone and that bristly bald head of his could be hammered at all day without him feeling it. You’d break your fingers on his skull. He worked nice and tight, head down and elbows in. That belly of his was as hard-packed as wood. But one good hit from those knobbly knuckles of his then it was goodnight, SanGreal.

That’s all he wants, one opening and he’s in.

Voices echoed, grumbles and a few laughs from the steps and a moment later down came Mo, Idres and Carados. Mo caught her gaze and the laughter stopped dead.

“Don’t mind us, boys,” said Gwaine, slowly circling her on the mat. “Mordred, get on with the drills.”

“What’s going on?” said Carados.

“Shut up and grab the swords,” snapped Mordred. He passed by close to Billi. “You’d better know what you’re doing.”

That makes two of us, mate.

Could she beat Gwaine? What would it prove in the end? Would it settle anything between them, or be a new source of resentment, even hate? Would it solve anything? She knew the answer to that. Billi tossed the gloves away. “I’m not fighting you, Gwaine. I’m not interested in this macho bullshit. You know I’m right about Ivan but you’re obsessed with status. That’s why you weren’t made Master and Dad was. He just wants to get the job done, any which way you can, but you want it all to be your way, or none at all. You’d rather fail than break the rules. I ain’t got the time for that.”

He smiled. He’d won this petty little victory and that’s all that mattered to him. His world was small, and bitter and this was the measure of Gwaine. An old hard man who couldn’t accept he’d been left behind and was grasping onto any little straw of relevance, to persuade himself that he mattered. It was sad and pitiful, but Billi wasn’t interested in pitying Gwaine. He was in her way and she was just going to step around him and leave him behind. She glanced over to Mordred. “Get Idres to practise with his off-hand. He needs to get more used to swapping grips, it’ll keep him unpredictable.”

“Got it.” Mordred tossed the wooden sword to Carados. “You heard her.”

Billi stopped in the fresh air outside Temple Church. There was a group of tourists rushing across the square, following a woman holding up the Monarch Tours sign. They took quick photos before heading off to their coach.

Great start to the day, SanGreal. One seriously pissed off Seneschal and those squires didn’t look like they were gonna be running to your aid any time soon.

Mo? Could she get Mo to help? Not likely.

Who does that leave? Faustus and ...

She wanted her dad back. But that wasn’t going to happen, not in time. Billi opened up her mobile and she almost called him, but her gaze instead fell on a text from Erin. She wanted to meet up and had ended it with a half-dozen kisses.

Erin was part of all this, whether she liked it or not. And she was in deep. Should Billi come clean and tell her exactly what was going on?

Could Erin handle it? To know what was really out there in the dark? Didn’t she have enough to be dealing with without