Bahram Chubin and Saveh Shah

In the tenth year of Hormozd's reign enemies rise against Iran on every side, and the worst is Saveh Shah, king of the Turks. He comes by the road of Herat (Hari in the poem) with drums, treasure, four hundred thousand men and twelve hundred war elephants, and his army fills the land from the plain of Herat to the gates of Marv-rud.

An old man, Mehran-Setad, has the answer. Long ago he went to the Khaqan of Chin to fetch a bride for Anushirvan, Hormozd's mother, and the Khaqan's astrologers foretold that one day a great king would lead the Turks against Iran, and that a servant of the shah from far away would break him with a small army: a tall, lean rider with black curls, a big nose and a dark skin, quick of tongue, nicknamed Chubineh. Mehran-Setad tells his story and dies. The master of the horse knows the man: Bahram, son of Goshasp, marchlord of Barda'a and Ardabil.

Hormozd sees the marks in him at once. Suing for peace, Bahram tells him, would only be defeat. He chooses just twelve thousand riders, all forty years old, because men of that age have families, honour and experience to lose. Hormozd hands him the violet dragon banner that once went before Rostam in battle. "I think you are a second Rostam," he says.

On the march a woman complains that a rider has taken her sack of straw without paying. Bahram has the man cut in two and proclaims that anyone who takes so much as a blade of straw will die the same way. Hormozd, meanwhile, sends Kharrad Borzin to Saveh Shah with gifts and soft words to draw him towards Herat. When the Turks reach the plain they find Bahram there before them, the city at his back, and their own vast army squeezed into ground too narrow for it.

The night before the battle Bahram dreams of defeat, and tells no one. At dawn he kneels in the dust and prays: if his cause is unjust, let Saveh have his way. Saveh's sorcerers raise a wind and a dark cloud that rains arrows; Bahram tells his men it is only trickery. When the elephants come on, he has every archer aim at their trunks. The wounded beasts turn and trample their own army.

From a hill behind his lines, seated on a golden throne, Saveh Shah watches his army run, and runs too. Bahram rides after him, chooses an arrow fletched with four eagle feathers and draws his bow of Chach. The shaft goes through Saveh Shah's spine, and Bahram cuts off his head. Later a red-haired Turk is brought in who says he is a sorcerer and sent Bahram his bad dream. Bahram has him beheaded too: all good things, he says, come from God.

It is Bahram's great day, and the beginning of his fall. He goes on to defeat Saveh Shah's son Parmudeh, but a quarrel over the spoils follows, Hormozd sends him a distaff and women's clothes, and the general who saved Iran begins to look at the throne.