Forud is Siyavash's son by his first marriage, raised by his mother alone in the fortress at Kalat. When the Iranian army comes east to avenge his father, he rides out to meet them as a friend.

Tous will not hear it. The army treats the mountain as hostile, Forud defends it, and by the time anybody establishes who he is, it is finished. It is the bleakest chapter in the poem, and nothing in it had to happen.