The Lion While He Slept

The first of the seven trials belongs to the horse. The poem has Rostam asleep in a reed-bed where a lion hunts, and Rakhsh fight the lion alone and kill it. Rostam wakes to a dead lion and scolds him: if the horse had been killed, who would have carried his armour to Mazandaran? He tells Rakhsh to wake him next time instead of fighting. The tale sets the pattern the rest of the trials follow — the horse notices first, and the instructions his rider gives him are not as wise as the rider thinks they are.