My mother named me Your Death!
Fate made me the hammer that smashes your helmet!
- Quote above is Rostam's reply to Ashkboos rhetoric of "What is your name? Who shall weep for your headless body?" after Ashkboos beats the Persian champion Roham and sends him riding for the hills and Rostam decides to step in and restore morale to the Persian army and goes to the battlefield on foot, armed with only a bow and a few arrows.
Where you come from, lions, whales and panthers...,
Do they all come riding to a fight?!
I shall dismount you like myself,
And both sides will laugh at you!
- Rostam's answer to Ashkboos declaration that because Rostam has come to challenge him on foot he's as good as dead.
Hold it's head in your lap and mourn him!
That way you can delay the fight for a while!
- After Rostam shoots a giant arrow at Ashkboos's horse, making good on his earlier promise and laughs. Previously Ashkboos says the only weapons he sees on Rostam are sad jokes (mocking the fact that Rostam is minimally armed).
You trouble yourself in vein...
Your two arms and malevolent soul!
- Rostam simple reply after Ashkboos shot arrows at Rostam which all miss while Ashkboos trembles with fear. After Rostam said above quote Ashkboos joins his beloved horse soon...
Whether you become a fish in the sea,
Or fade into the darkness of night,
Or If you become a twinkle in the starry sky,
And forsake the earth all together,
My father will come seeking vengeance,
When he learns, my bed is in the ground!
Of all these warriors present,
One will bring the news to Rostam,
That ‘your son Sohrab is stricken down’
Then he will come looking for you!!!
- A decidedly tragic example is Sohrab's last words which he delivers one to his opponent as he lies dying. The Irony is of course, he is saying all this to his father Rostam.
Who told you to go bind Rostam's hands?!
Not even the heaven's can tie my hands!
For even if the heavens tell me to accept this
The heaven's will feel the weight of my mace!
Never since I grew to old age from childhood,
Have I stood for such dishonor!
- Culmination of Rostam's long Badass Boast when Esfandiar tell's Rostam that he's there to arrest Rostam and take him to his father with his hands tied.
"This royal throne is an illusion, a win, and you should not tie your heart to it for eternity. I have striven with dangers and difficulties for a hundred and twenty years, known great happiness and success, and faced my enemies in battle. The glory of Feraydun inspired me, and with his advice I turned all injuries to my advantage...But now it is as if I had never seen or known the world; the reckoning has passed and gone into darkness. Life has less potency than death; it is a tree whose leaves and fruits are poison. I have endured pain and sorrow, and now I bestow the imperial throne and treasure on you...Know that when you have experienced the world and it has gone by, you must return to a better place, but the traces you leave behind will last for long years...You have hard work ahead of you, and those you confront will sometimes be wolves, sometimes sheep."
— Shah Manuchehr, Testament to his successor Nozar, Prose translation by Dick Davis, Viking Press Edition, Page 110-111, "The Beginning of the War between Iran and Turan
