“If I remember correctly, there be a ferry crossin’ but a few miles upstream, Feldegast told him.
“Won’t the ferryman be just as frightened of the plague as the people in that city are?” Durnik asked him.
“ ’Tis an ox-drawn ferry, Goodman—with teams on each side an’ cables an’ pulleys an’ all. The ferryman kin take our money an’ put us on the far bank an’ never come within fifty yards of us. I fear the crossin’ will be dreadful expensive, though.”
The ferry proved to be a leaky old barge attached to a heavy cable stretched across the yellow-brown river.
“Stay back!” the mud-covered man holding the rope hitched about the neck of the lead ox on the near side commanded as they approached. “I don’t want any of your filthy diseases.”
“How much to go across?” Silk called to him.
The muddy fellow squinted greedily at them, assessing their clothing and horses. “One gold piece,” he said flatly.
“That’s outrageous!”
“Try swimming.”
“Pay him,” Belgarath said.
“Not likely,” Silk replied. “I refuse to be cheated—even here. Let me think a minute.” His narrow face became intent as he stared hard at the rapacious ferryman.
“Durnik,” he said thoughtfully, “do you have your axe handy?”
The smith nodded, patting the axe which hung from a loop at the back of his saddle.
“Do you suppose you could reconsider just a bit, friend?” the little Drasnian called plaintively to the ferryman.
“One gold piece,” the ferryman repeated stubbornly.
Silk sighed. “Do you mind if we look at your boat first? It doesn’t look all that safe to me.”
“Help yourself—but I won’t move it until I get paid.”
Silk looked at Durnik. “Bring the axe,” he said.
Durnik dismounted and lifted his broad-bladed axe from its loop. Then the two of them climbed down the slippery bank to the barge. They went up the sloping ramp and onto the deck. Silk stamped his feet tentatively on the planking. “Nice boat,” he said to the ferryman, who stood cautiously some distance away.” Are you sure you won’t reconsider the price?”
“One gold piece. Take it or leave it.”
Silk sighed. “I was afraid you might take that position.” He scuffed one foot at the muddy deck. “You know more about boats than I do, friend,” he observed. “How long do you think it would take this tub to sink if my friend here chopped a hole in the bottom?”
The ferryman gaped at him.
“Pull up the decking in the bow, Durnik,” Silk suggested pleasantly. “Give yourself plenty of room for a good swing.”
The desperate ferryman grabbed up a club and ran down the bank.
“Careful, friend,” Silk said to him. “We left Mal Zeth only yesterday, and I’m already starting to feel a little feverish—something I ate, no doubt.”
The ferryman froze in his tracks.
Durnik was grinning as he began to pry up the decking at the front of the barge.
“My friend here is an expert woodsman,” Silk continued in a conversational tone, “and his axe is terribly sharp. I’ll wager that he can have this scow lying on the bottom inside of ten minutes.”
“I can see into the hold now,” Durnik reported, suggestively testing the edge of his axe with his thumb. “Just how big a hole would you like?”
“Oh,” Silk replied, “I don’t know, Durnik—a yard or so square, maybe. Would that sink it?”
“I’m not sure. Why don’t we try it and find out?” Durnik pushed up the sleeves of his short jacket and hefted his axe a couple of times.
The ferryman was making strangled noises and hopping up and down.
“What’s your feeling about negotiation at this point, friend?” Silk asked him. “I’m almost positive that we can reach an accommodation—now that you fully understand the situation.”
When they were partway across the river and the barge was wallowing heavily in the current, Durnik walked forward to the bow and stood looking into the opening he had made by prying up the deck. “I wonder how big a hole it would take to sink this thing,” he mused.
“What was that, dear?” Polgara asked him.
“Just thinking out loud, Pol,” he said. “But do you know something? I just realized that I’ve never sunk a boat before.”
She rolled her eyes heavenward. “Men,” she sighed.
“I suppose I’d better put the planks back so that we can lead the horses off on the other side,” Durnik said almost regretfully.
They erected their tents in the shelter of a grove of cedar trees near the river that evening. The sky, which had been serene and blue since they had arrived in Mallorea, had turned threatening as the sun sank, and there were rumbles of thunder and brief flickers of lightning among the clouds off to the west.
After supper, Durnik and Toth went out of the grove for a look around and returned with sober faces. “I’m afraid that we’re in for a spell of bad weather,” the smith reported. “You can smell it coming.”
“I hate riding in the rain,” Silk complained.
“Most people do, Prince Kheldar,” Feldegast told him. “But bad weather usually keeps others in as well, don’t y’ know; an’ if what that hungry traveler told us this afternoon be true, we’ll not be wantin’ t’ meet the sort of folk that be abroad in Venna when the weather’s fine.”
“He mentioned the Chandim,” Sadi said, frowning. “Just exactly who are they?”
“The Chandim are an order within the Grolim Church,” Belgarath told him. “When Torak built Cthol Mishrak, he converted certain Grolims into Hounds to patrol the region. After Vo Mimbre, when Torak was bound in sleep, Urvon converted about half of them back. The ones who reassumed human form are all sorcerers of greater or lesser talent, and they can communicate with the ones who are still Hounds. They’re very close-knit—like a pack of wild dogs—and they’re all fanatically loyal to Urvon.”
“An’ that be much of the source of Urvon’s power,” Feldegast added. “Ordinary Grolims be always schemin’ against each other an’ against their superiors, but Urvon’s Chandim have kept the Mallorean Grolims in line fer five hundred years now.”
“And the Temple Guardsmen?” Sadi added. “Are they Chandim, or Grolims, too?”
“Not usually,” Belgarath replied. “There are Grolims among them, of course, but most of them are Mallorean Angaraks. They were recruited before Vo Mimbre to serve as Torak’s personal bodyguard.”
“Why would a God need a bodyguard?”
“I never entirely understood that myself,” the old man admitted. “Anyway, after Vo Mimbre, there are still a few of them left—new recruits, veterans who’d been wounded in earlier battles and sent home, that sort of thing. Urvon persuaded them that he spoke for Torak, and now their allegiance is to him. After that, they recruited more young Angaraks to fill up the holes in their ranks. They do more than just guard the Temple now, though. When Urvon started having difficulties with the Emperors at Mal Zeth, he decided that he needed a fighting force, so he expanded them into an army.”
“ ’Tis a practical arrangement,” Feldegast pointed out. “The Chandim provide Urvon with the sorcery he needs t’ keep the other Grolims toein’ the mark, an’ the simple Guardsmen provide the muscle t’ keep the ordinary folk from protestin’ their lot.”
“These Guardsmen, they’re just ordinary soldiers, then?” Durnik asked.
“Not really. They’re closer to being knights,” Belgarath replied.
“Like Mandorallen, you mean—all dressed in steel plate and with shields and lances and war horses and all that?”
“No, Goodman,” Feldegast answered. “They’re not nearly so grand. Lances an’ helmets and shields they have, certainly, but fer the rest, they rely on chain mail.
They be most nearly as stupid as Arends, however. Somethin’ about wearin’ all that steel empties the mind of every knight the world around.”