The White Fortress is the first thing Sohrab comes to, and its garrison has nobody left who will go out. Gordafarid, who is Gozhdaham's daughter, puts on mail, pushes her hair up under a helmet, and rides out to fight him.

She holds him. When the helmet comes off and he sees what he has been fighting, she talks her way back inside the gate, and the fortress is emptied behind her that night. The poem gives her the whole episode and does not once treat it as a surprise that she could do it.