Kaveh was a blacksmith with eighteen sons, and seventeen of them had been taken to feed Zahhak's snakes. When the guards came for the last one, he walked into the court and asked the king to his face what kind of justice this was.

Zahhak was shaken. He gave the son back, and then asked Kaveh to sign a paper saying the king had always been just. Kaveh tore it up and walked out. In the square he tied his leather apron to a spear, and the crowd that gathered under it set off to find Fereydun.