English
The Vengeance for Bahram
When the shining sun turned its back on the sky, Giv's heart grew heavy with grief for his brother.
He said to Bizhan: 'Guide me, my brother has not returned.'
'We must go and see what has become of him; we should not weep only over what is already gone.'
The two warriors set off like the wind toward that place of strife, shame, and battle.
Longing to find Bahram, they searched among the wounded and the slain.
The whole plain was covered with wounded and dead; a world was drenched in blood.
When the warriors found Bahram, they rushed forward, their eyes flooded with tears and blood.
He lay cast down in dust and blood, his hand fallen from him, his fortune overturned.
Water poured down over his face, and out of love for him two men's eyes ran with blood.
When his senses returned he opened his eyes; his body was full of blood and his heart full of rage.
He said to Giv: 'You who seek great deeds, when you wrap my face in the coffin,
take vengeance for your brother from Tazhav; an ox has no strength to stand against a lion.
Piran son of Vise first saw me, he who once sat beside me in kinder days.
All the famous men and champions of China came at me, hungry for revenge.
It was cruel Tazhav who cut me down, with no regard for lineage or standing.'
When brave Bahram spoke these words, Giv poured pale tears from his lashes.
By the Creator who sustains all he swore, by the white day and the deep-blue night,
that no Roman helmet would touch his head again until he had won vengeance for Bahram.
Full of grief and full of hatred he mounted, an Indian blade gripped in his hand.
At the moment when the face of the world turned black, Tazhav rode out from the scouting patrol.
When brave Giv saw him from afar, he wheeled his reins and held his breath.
When he knew that Tazhav had drifted past the army, far from its champions and proud leaders,
he flung the coiling lasso at him; the noose caught Tazhav around the waist.
He drew it tight and quickly turned back, then easily tore him from the saddle.
He threw him to the ground, wretched and broken, dismounted, and bound his hands.
He mounted again and dragged him along behind, like a man senseless and half-dead.
Pleading, Tazhav said to him: 'Brave one, no strength is left in me at all.
What did I do that, before all this great host, you have turned my dark night into hell?'
He struck two hundred lashes across his head and said: 'This is no place for talk.
Do you not know, wretched and ill-fated one, that in the garden of vengeance you have planted a fresh tree,
whose height reached level with the wheeling sky, whose trunk drank blood, and whose fruit was heads?
You must be Bahram's prey in war; now you will feel the bite of the crocodile's jaws.'
Warlike Tazhav said to Giv: 'You are like an eagle, and I like a lark.
I had no design of harm against Bahram, nor did his final hour come by my hand.
When I arrived, the horsemen of China had already slain him on the field of vengeance.'
The truth was that Bahram had lost his life, and Giv's heart writhed with grief for him.
Brave Giv dragged him before the lion Bahram, whose heart was pierced with wounds.
He said to him: 'Here is the head of the faithless one; I repay cruelty with cruelty.
Thanks to the Creator who made the world, that I have lived to see this hour,
so that now I can send the dark soul of your enemy out of your sight forever.'
Tazhav kept pleading with them, seeking strength to escape his own death.
He said: 'If this is how it happened, what good is it to cut off my head with a dagger?
Let me be a slave to your soul; I will tend and honor your grave.'
The lion Bahram said to Giv: 'You renowned and famous brave one,
if harm came to me through him, he need not taste death on this same day.
Give his guilty head to me as a gift of life; let him live, that he may keep my memory in the world.'
But when the brother saw Bahram wounded and saw the cruel Tazhav bound,
he cried out and seized Tazhav's beard, and cut his head from his body like a lark's.
After that, Giv's heart burned over them, and his soul blazed up with a fire of grief.
He raised a cry: 'Who in all the world has seen such a wonder, hidden or plain,
that whether I kill or am killed before me, he was my brother or my kin?'
He spoke, and brave Bahram gave up his life; such is the way and the nature of the world.
Whoever reaches for the reins of greatness must first wash his hands in blood.
Whether he kills or is killed in agony, wander as little through this world as you can.
Weeping, he bound Tazhav's corpse on the horse, handed it to Bizhan, and then mounted.
He carried it from the place of Tazhav toward Iran, his heart burning with rage.
When he had moved far from that field of battle, he built a tomb like a palace hall.
He filled its inside with musk and ambergris, and wrapped Bahram's body in Chinese silk.
In the manner of kings he laid him on an ivory throne and hung a crown above his head.
They sealed the tomb's entrance red and blue; you would think Bahram had never existed.
That renowned army fell into mourning, for Bahram and for the turning of fate.