Esfandiyar's seven labours

At a Glance

Central figures: Esfandiyar, prince of Iran and champion of the Zoroastrian faith; his father Goshtasp, the shah who sends him on the mission; and Esfandiyar’s companion and guide along the road.
Setting: Iran and the hostile lands beyond it, across seven stages of wilderness between the court of Goshtasp and the fortress of Arjasp, the Turanian warlord who has captured Esfandiyar’s sisters.
The turn: Goshtasp promises Esfandiyar the throne if he rescues his sisters from Arjasp’s stronghold - but the road passes through seven trials that no army can survive, and Esfandiyar must face them with a small band.
The outcome: Esfandiyar defeats every obstacle - wolves, lions, a dragon, a sorceress, a simurgh, a blizzard, and a river crossing under siege - and storms Arjasp’s fortress, freeing his sisters and killing the Turanian king.
The legacy: Esfandiyar returns victorious but Goshtasp refuses to yield the throne, setting in motion the chain of betrayal that will end with Esfandiyar’s death at Rostam’s hands.

Goshtasp sat on the throne and would not rise from it. He had accepted the faith of Zoroaster, had declared himself protector of the sacred fire, and had promised his son Esfandiyar the crown of Iran in exchange for service. The service never ended. There was always one more task, one more war, one more road into danger - and the throne remained occupied.

When Arjasp, the Turanian warlord, attacked and carried off Esfandiyar’s two sisters to his fortress beyond the wastes, Goshtasp called his son to court. The promise was the same as before: go, fight, return, and the crown is yours. Esfandiyar knew the promise. He also knew the road - seven stages, each one deadly. He gathered a small company of warriors and rode out.

The Wolves and the Lions

The first stage was a plain swarming with wolves. They came out of the grass in hundreds, grey and silent at first, then howling. Esfandiyar rode into them on his war-horse, his sword in his right hand and his mace slung at the saddle. He killed wolves until the blade was slick and the horse’s legs were red to the knee. His companions fought on either side, but it was Esfandiyar who broke the pack’s nerve. By evening, the plain was still.

The second stage followed almost without pause. Lions had claimed the narrow valley beyond the wolf-plain - great beasts that did not scatter at the sound of hooves. Esfandiyar dismounted. He fought the largest lion on foot, driving his sword through its throat while it clawed the armor from his shoulder. The rest fled into the rocks. He bound the wound and kept moving.

The Dragon

The third stage held a dragon. It lay across the road like a hill of scaled leather, its mouth wide enough to swallow a horse and rider together. No direct charge would work.

Esfandiyar ordered a war-wagon built - a box of wood and iron set on wheels, with blades projecting from every surface like the spines of a hedgehog. He had the wagon drawn by horses toward the dragon’s open jaws. When the creature swallowed it, the blades cut through the soft tissue of its mouth and throat from the inside. The dragon convulsed, coughed blood, and died. Esfandiyar walked over its body and did not look back.

The Sorceress

At the fourth stage, a woman sat beside a spring in a green valley. She was beautiful, her voice was sweet, and she offered Esfandiyar wine and rest. He recognized what she was. A peri - or something older and worse, wearing a peri’s face.

He accepted the cup. He sat beside her. And while she sang, he slipped a Zoroastrian prayer-cord around her wrist.

The beauty fell away. What sat beside him was withered, crooked, snarling. He killed her with a single stroke. The green valley did not change - the spring still ran, the grass still grew - but the air felt different afterward, as though something had been pulled out of it.

The Simurgh and the Blizzard

The fifth stage was a great bird - not the Simurgh of the Alborz who had raised Zal, but a monstrous thing of the same kind, hostile and territorial, whose wings darkened the sky. Esfandiyar fought it with arrows. He planted himself on open ground and fired until the bird dropped, its breast feathered with shafts. It took a long time to die.

The sixth stage was not a creature at all. A blizzard struck the company in the mountain passes - wind so cold it killed horses where they stood, snow so heavy a man could not see his own hands. Esfandiyar kept his men moving. He walked ahead, breaking trail, shouting back over the wind. Some of his company froze. He could not save them all. When the storm broke, the survivors staggered out of the pass with blackened fingers and cracked lips, and Esfandiyar counted the dead and said nothing.

The River and the Fortress

The seventh and final stage was a river crossing held by Turanian soldiers. Arjasp had placed his garrison there precisely because a small force could hold it against thousands. Esfandiyar did not bring thousands. He brought what he had left - exhausted men on exhausted horses - and he hit the crossing at dawn, in the mist, before the sentries could form a line. The fighting was short and ugly. Esfandiyar’s mace broke skulls. His men took the ford.

Beyond the river stood Arjasp’s fortress. Esfandiyar used a stratagem - some tellings say he entered disguised as a merchant, his weapons hidden in bales of cloth; others say he went over the wall at night with a picked company. However it happened, he found his sisters alive, killed Arjasp in his own hall, and burned the fortress behind him as he left.

The Return

Esfandiyar rode back to Iran with his sisters, his surviving warriors, and the head of Arjasp. He had done everything his father had asked. He had crossed seven stages of death. He had lost men. He had bled.

Goshtasp received him with ceremony. The court celebrated. The fires were lit, the drums beaten, the poets composed verses in Esfandiyar’s name.

The throne did not change hands.

Goshtasp praised his son, honored his son, embraced his son - and remained seated on the throne of Iran. There was, he explained, one more task. One more service that Esfandiyar must perform before the crown could pass. He must go to Sistan and bring Rostam, the old pahlavan, to court in chains.

Esfandiyar stood in his father’s hall, the dust of seven labors still on him, and understood that the promise had never been real. He went anyway. He rode to Sistan, and on that road he met his death - but that is another story, and the grief of it belongs to Rostam as much as to Esfandiyar. What matters here is the seven stages: the wolves, the lions, the dragon, the sorceress, the bird, the blizzard, the river. Esfandiyar walked through all of them. The crown he earned was never given.