Word: warlord
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...When one of David’s opponents finds a spear driven through his stomach, he’s “like a Kurosawa samurai.” When David wages war from Caanan’s outskirts, he’s “like a warlord, or a guerilla...
...SENTENCED. FARYADI SARWAR ZARDAD, 42, former Afghan warlord; to 20 years in a British prison, for torture and hostage taking; in London. In the first trial in Britain for torture committed by a foreigner in another country, Zardad was convicted of human-rights violations while ruling the region of Sarobi outside Kabul from 1992-96. On hearing his sentence, Zardad, who left Afghanistan in 1998 to escape the Taliban and was arrested in 2003 while managing a pizza parlor in London, raised his fist and shouted "Allah is great...
...great age of the conspicuous helmet began around the middle of the 16th century, when the old pattern of warfare--a field of small semichivalric duels between single combatants--gave way to clashes of massed troops under the command of daimyo, or warlords, who had conscripted them from their estates. These armies could be enormous, siphoning up the manpower of whole provinces. In his last major battle in 1590, the warlord Hideyoshi led 100,000 men at the climax of a five-month siege...
...horseback, the warlord had to stand out from the anonymous mass of his footsloggers, archers and pikemen. In full rig, cased like a land crab in the formal armor that was designed to protect him against sword cuts and even the slow-flying lead balls of a matchlock, he was a sight: the armor consisted of hundreds of lacquered leather platelets, like fish scales, bound together with silk cord. But his mask, finial, badge and troops' standard, all in one, was the helmet, on whose design much fantasy and theatrical cunning were expended. Because they were an inviting target...
...distinctive decor, the conspicuous helmet was a cap of riveted metal leaves, weighing up to 11 lbs. and meant to protect a man's skull against sword and club. But was ever a martial object more drenched in symbolic fancy? The helmet had to convey no meaning to the warlord's troops except its own singularity. It was the exact reverse of a "uniform"; it was a portable spectacle. Its shape was not determined by the kind of functional rules that governed the making of a samurai's main emblem, the katana or long sword, whose basic form was fixed...