be.
• ... ...What Aisha saw from the height of her camel was a
battle as horrific as all had feared. Hardened warriors
swore the rest of their lives that they had never seen so
many severed arms and legs. It lasted from early
morning to midafternoon, and by the time it was done,
three thousand men, most of them from Aisha’s army,
lay dead and dying.
The survivors told their stories, as survivors must.
Some chose the path of inspiration, heroic tales of
sangfroid in the face of death, like that of the warrior
who used his own severed leg as a weapon. The leg had
been cut oʃ by a huge sweep of his opponent’s sword,
and his own sword was gone. He knew that he was done
for, but he seized the severed leg, swung it with lethal
force at the very man who had cut it oʃ, then collapsed
from loss of blood, his head on his enemy’s chest. That is
how a fellow warrior found him just before he died.
“Who did this to you?” he asked.
The answer came with a smile: “My cushion.”
Such tales of indomitable spirit in the face of death are
legion. Men ɹght on bravely despite the loss of arms and
legs. They ɹght with their hearts, defying inevitable
odds. They ɹght to the last drop of their own blood,
holding their swords in their teeth if need be, as would