[BOOK I]
SEED TIME
1493 to 1504
KING-ERRANT
CHAPTER I
".... for I know
How far high failure overleaps the bounds
Of low successes--"
Lewis Morris.
The fortified town of Andijân lay hot in the spring sunshine. Outside the citadel, in the clover meadows which stretched from its gate to the Black-river (a tributary to the swift Jaxartes which flows through the kingdom of Ferghâna) a group of boys and men were playing leap-frog.