Editing Avramistan (section)

=== Paragraph 3: The Town's Neighbours ===
The town faces no immediate threat against itself in particular but it is liable to the same sudden threats to which all of the towns of the plain are subject: raiders.  the Rus ply the great rivers in their longships and sometimes make depredations inland.  The Magyars and Eastern Tartars will send hordes into Avramistan and towns like Bayantai are the target.  The fort is regularly visited by the hordes of the Bek but is little more than a resting stop for the mounted couriers that keep the kingdom together.  Local Khan Natan-ben-Edrene has only a small horsetroop to keep order for the Bek.  Spring and summer see increased tension between Nomads and Farmers which breaks into violence.  Disreputable characters make their way down from the Spice Road.  Two ancient places of power predate the Covenant and are avoided by those who follow the Law and the Prophets: an open-air burial ground of the Eastern Tartars ("Khan's Grave") and "The Mounds," huge burial sites of a people who predate the coming of the Tartars to this region.

* Farmers and Nomads (lifted from Bruce Chatwin, ''The Songlines'')
: "The farmers say they are the oldest people in the land.  They plant wheat, flax, and melons.  They have long, resigned faces and exhaust themselves in tending irrigation ditches.  They keep fighting partridges and do not know how to look after horses.
: In the valleys above the villages, nomads make camp.  Their yurts have domed white roofs, and the sides are painted with lozenges, scrolls, and cheques in every colour.  Horses graze in cornflower meadows, near a willow-guarded stream.  Fat tailed sheep graze too.  The women card their wool in the noonday sun.
: This is the time of year when farmers and nomads, after a season of acrimony, are suddenly the best of friends.  The harvest is in.  The nomads buy grain for winter.  The villagers buy cheese and hides and meat.  They welcome the sheep onto their fields: to break up the stubble and manure it for planting."
* The Nomad's Contempt For the Sedentary
:: I do not have a mill with willow trees
:: I have a horse and a whip
:: I will kill you and go 
::::(Yomut Turkoman)