Rostam finds Rakhsh and brings Kay Qobad

After Zav, his son Garshasp takes the throne, but the poem has little to say of him, and soon the throne of Iran stands empty. Pashang, who will not look at Afrasiab since he murdered Aghriras, still sends him back across the Jayhun: no one must be allowed to sit on that throne. The Iranians turn on Zal. Since Sam died, they say, they have not had one easy day. Zal answers that he is old now, his neck bent. But Rostam has grown as tall as a cypress, and he needs a horse.

'Your lips still smell of milk,' Zal tells him. Rostam answers that he is no man for wine and rest; he wants a horse like a mountain and a mace like a piece of one. Zal has the herds of Zabolestan and Kabul driven past him. Rostam tests each horse by pressing a hand on its back, and each one sinks until its belly touches the ground. Then a grey mare runs by, lion-chested, and behind her a colt as big as she is, black-eyed, with steel hooves, dappled like rose petals on saffron.

An old herdsman warns him: the colt has no brand and no known owner. 'We call him Rakhsh,' he says, fiery in temper and fiery in colour. People call him Rostam's Rakhsh, but no one has ridden him, though he has been ready for the saddle these three years, and his mother fights like a lion whenever a rider comes near. Rostam throws his noose over the colt's head. The mare charges; Rostam roars, knocks her down with his fist, and she runs back to the herd. He presses his hand on the colt's back, and the colt does not even bend. He asks the price. 'If you are Rostam,' the herdsman says, 'mount him and set Iran right. His price is the land of Iran.' From then on they burn wild rue (sepand) around Rakhsh every night against the evil eye.

The young king on Alborz

The armies meet at Khar, near Rey. An army without a king, Zal says, is a body without a head, and a mobed (priest) has named the man: Kay Qobad, of Fereydun's line, who lives on Mount Alborz. Rostam rides there, scattering a Turanian outpost. Near the mountain he finds a young man on a throne beside a stream, among trees and running water, with a court around him. They invite him to drink. He refuses: Iran has no king, and he has business on Alborz. Only when they promise to tell him where Kay Qobad is does he dismount. The young man takes his hand, drinks to him, asks why he wants Qobad, and then, smiling, says, 'I am Kay Qobad.' He has dreamed, he says, that two white falcons flew from Iran and set a shining crown on his head.

On the way back the Turk Qolun bars the road. Rostam tells the prince to leave the fighting to him, wrenches Qolun's spear out of his hand and lifts him from the saddle on it like a bird on a spit. He brings Qobad to Zal's camp by night, and after a week of council Qobad is crowned.

In the battle that follows Rostam asks his father how to find Afrasiab. Zal warns him: black banner, black armour, iron helmet, and a dragon in a fight. Rostam rides straight at him, grips him by the belt and lifts him out of the saddle, meaning to carry him to the king. The belt snaps, Afrasiab falls, and his horsemen drag him away. Rostam bites the back of his hand: why did he not hold him under his arm? The Turanians flee to the Jayhun. Afrasiab tells his father that in that hand he weighed no more than a gnat, and Pashang sues for peace on the old border Fereydun drew. Rostam objects that this is no time for peace, but Qobad answers that nothing is better than justice. He gives Rostam the land from Zabolestan to the Indus, gives Kabul to Mehrab, and rules from Estakhr for a hundred years.