Once he was arrested by the guard at the Ahmar Gate, plodding cheerfully on all fours for open country, and returned, kicking and raging, in the arms of a laughing petty officer.
Ortho himself caught the youngster emerging through the postern onto the Royal parade ground.
“He fears nothing,” Ourida exulted. “He will be a great warrior and slay a thousand infidels—the sword of Allah!—um-yum, my jewel.”
That battered soldier and turncoat infidel, his father, rubbed his chin uneasily. “M’yes . . . perhaps. Time enough yet.”
But there was no gainsaying the fierce spirit of the Arab mother, daughter of a hundred fighting _sheiks_; her will was stronger than his. The baby’s military education began at once. In the cool of the morning she brought Saïd II. to the parade ground, perched him on the parapet of the Dar-el-Heni and taught him to clap his hands when the Horse went by.
Once she hoisted him to his father’s saddle bow. The fat creature twisted both hands in the black stallion’s mane and kicked the glossy neck with his heels, gurgling with joy.
“See, see,” said Ourida, her eyes like stars for radiance. “He grips, he rides. He will carry the standard in his day _zahrit_.” The soldiers laughed and lifted their lances. “Hail to the young Kaid!”
Ortho, gripping his infant son by the slack of his miniature jellab, felt sick. Ourida and these other simple-minded fanatics would beat him yet with their fool ideas of glory, urge this crowing baby of his into hardship, terror, pain, possibly agonizing death.
Parenthood was making a thoughtful man of him. He was no longer the restless adventurer of two years ago, looking on any change as better than none. He grudged every moment away from the Bab Ahmar, dreaded the spring campaign, the separation it would entail, the chance bullet that might make it eternal.
His ambition dimmed. He no longer wanted power and vast wealth, only enough to live comfortably on with Ourida and young Saïd just as he was. Promotion meant endless back-stair intrigues; he had no taste left for them and had other uses for the money and so fell out of the running.
A Spanish woman in the royal harem, taking advantage of her temporary popularity with Mahomet, worked her wretched little son into position over Penhale’s head and over him went a fat Moor, Yakoub Ben Ahmed by name, advanced by the offices of a fair sister, also in the seraglio. Neither of these heroes had more than a smattering of military lore and no battle experience whatever, but Ortho did not greatly care. Promotion might be rapid in the Shereefian army, but degradation was apt to be instantaneous—the matter of a sword flash. He had risen as far as he could rise with moderate safety and there he would stop. Security was his aim nowadays, a continuance of things as they were.