22: Meeting
V
edrix
walked alone in a dripping oakwood, his thin cloak drenched with a sudden shower of rain. As often as he was able, he would creep away from the crowded and stinking encampment on the salt-marshes, where the men mocked him and when they were drunk, which was often, pushed him from one to the other, as though he were a blindfold boy or a half-wit.
There was one whom he hated especially, a squat cross-eyed fellow with a tumour on the side of his neck, who felt that the world had betrayed him and so was always anxious to make suffer those who had been born more fortunate. This man made Vedrix weep with weak vexation, and when he was in that state he became almost inarticulate and quite unable to answer the sneers and taunts of his tormentor.
As Vedrix walked in the woo
