"What shall I do, O Asha? My son has smiled in my face!"
Asha was prepared for this, and answered:
"Thou shalt send me and thy son and thy daughter's son and every male infant to the slaughter pens, and have us all beheaded and cast into the fire! Otherwise it will come true as the infant Zarathustra prophesied: his hand will smite Oas city, and it will fall as a heap of straw."
So the king appointed a day for the slaughter, and ninety thousand male infants were adjudged to death.
Chojon, from the safety of the forest, made a scornful song about the tyrant of Oas who went to war against babes, and it was sung everywhere in the city, and the king could do nothing about it, for it was cleverly worded, seeming to approve, though in satire only.
When the day for the slaughter arrived, there were but a thousand appeared with their babes out of the ninety thousand adjudged to death—all the rest having fled to the forest as had Chojon.
The King saw an excuse in this to get out of killing his own son, and stood pondering how to escape his own decree. His wife, Betraj, came before him, holding out her son, saying:
"Here, oh King, take thou thy flesh and blood and prove the inexorable justice of the King's decrees."
But the King said: