81 then the others rally round and force the rebel to return to his obedience of the king, or they destroy him. These governors are often at war with each other; they have a lot of cavalry; and they havefine archers who use Turkish bows. They are good-looking white men; they wearfine white cottons, with caps on their heads. They come from different places and are well-paid; they speak Arabian; Persian and Deccan, which is the local language. These Mouros lords often carry tents with them, with which they set up a camp in thefields when they are travelling or when they are going tofight somewhere. They gallop with long stirrups, they use whips; they fight tied on to the saddle and with long and very light iron spears with three-foot iron tips, which are square and very strong; they wear quilted cotton coats and many have chainmail skirts. Their horses are wellcovered with their steel headstalls; they carry maces and hatchets, and two swords and their daggers, two or three Turkish bows hanging from the saddle with long arrows. Thus, each man carries enough weapons for two. They take their wives with them when they go tofight, and they use pack oxen, which carry their baggage when they are journeying. They are often at war with the King of Vijayanagara, from whom they have captured many villages, and he tries to recover them. And they are rarely at peace, much less so, when the Sabayo was alive. The gentiles of this kingdom of Deccan are black men and of good character. They are mostly foot soldiers, some albeit few fight on horseback. The foot soldiers carry swords and daggers; bows and arrows. They are excellent archers; their bows are like English longbows. They are naked from the waist up and cover themselves below. They wear small caps on their heads, eat all types of meat except for beef, which their religion, that they strictly observe, forbids. When they die, they have their corpses burned and their wives burn themselves alive, which I will talk about when I deal with the kingdom of Vijayanagara.
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