By the time it was high noon, Kichiro reached the training grounds for the Teal Banner Steppe Riders. He strode proudly into the torn-up field, where only clumps of grass remained, his self-bow slung around his shoulder and his horse at his side. The mare had come to obey him, perhaps partly as a result of the bonuses that Kichiro’s Steppe Rider Job gave him to taming horses, which were significant even at Level 1. Promptly, a Steppe Rider hurled past him at full gallop, missing him by a few inches.

‘Watch where you’re going, you bastard!’ Kichiro yelled after the rider, dusting himself off. He had stumbled and fallen.

The Steppe Rider ignored him. There was never actually any risk that Kichiro would collide with him. So sure was he in his mastery over his horse, that it seemed the horse and its rider were one and the same. After effortlessly planting three successive arrows into the heads of the target strawmen scattered about the field, he turned, approached Kichiro, and reined in. Or rather, she.

The female horse archer looked down at Kichiro coldly with her dark almond eyes.

‘From whence do you hail?’ she spoke, her voice even, not betraying in the least the vigorous exercise she had just engaged in.

Kichiro leapt onto his feet, stood upright and met her cool gaze with a smile. He was quite impressed to meet a female warrior, and one of such clear calibre no less. There were no female warriors in the Morning Peninsula.

‘My name is Kichiro,’ he announced, ‘I come from the Morning Peninsula and I have just been made Steppe Rider of the Teal Banner!’

‘I am Ilha,’ she replied, ‘Steppe Champion of the Teal Banner.’

Kichiro went wide-eyed. He assumed correctly that Steppe Champion must be a 2nd Job. Jobs could be trained to a maximum Level of 50. A 1st Stage Job such as Steppe Rider, upon being trained to Level 50, could be upgraded to a 2nd Stage Job, in this case, Steppe Champion (or Steppe Lancer). Of course, one would start the 2nd Stage Job back at Level 1, but 2nd Stage Jobs entailed much stronger bonuses and Abilities than 1st Stage Jobs, and the skills attained at the preceding Job remained.

Ilha seemed to be around Kichiro’s age. To reach a 2nd Stage Job so early in life was rare and suggested a combination of immense talent and total dedication. Kichiro was full of admiration, although it was tinged with a dash of envy.

General information

Attributes

Job information

Name

Ilha

Name

Value

Name

Value

Name

Level

Progress

Species

Human

AGI

17

STR

17

Steppe Champion

7

57%

Sex

Female

CHA

18

WIL

21

Age

18 years

CON

15

WIS

11

HP

92/92 (+0.04/sec)

DEX

32

SP

186/186 (+0.3/sec)

INT

19

Ilha looked first at Kichiro’s lame pony, then at his bow, and then at him.

‘You’re going to need a new mount and a new bow,’ she told him.

‘I just got them today!’ Kichiro protested, stroking his mare protectively.

‘How experienced are you at horsemanship?’.

‘I’ve never ridden a horse in my life.’

Ilha sighed. Stupid foreigner, she thought to herself.

‘Go over and saddle your horse,’ she instructed him, ‘In the meantime, I will continue my practice.’

It took Kichiro four hours to saddle his horse. Figuring out how to tie up a saddle while keeping her under control turned out to be a greater challenge than he expected. By the time he returned to the field where Ilha was training, he was red-faced and sweaty and the sun was low in the sky, but he was excited. Ilha was taking a break when he arrived, squatting on the ground and chewing on fermented curds. She squinted at him.

‘Still here?’

‘Yes I am!’

‘Alright,’ said Ilha, ‘Now get on your horse.’

Kichiro tried to leap up onto the stirrup, but his mare trotted off. His foot missed the stirrup and he crashed into the ground. Red-faced, he dusted himself off and pursued the horse. After a couple of attempts, he finally managed to get on the saddle with a victorious cry, but he had tied up the saddle improperly and within moments it slid off the horse, taking Kichiro with it. Ilha hardly paid attention to his fruitless endeavours, having noticed that Kichiro’s mare was bobbing her head vigorously with every step.

‘There’s something wrong with her neck,’ she told Kichiro.

Kichiro was busy saddling his mare again, sweat stinging his eyes. His loose-fitting Peninsular coat was soaked.

‘I’ve a week to gain experience before Marshall Jirgalang will send me on Quests,’ he said, ‘I don’t have time to take care of her neck right now!’

Ilha looked at him thoughtfully. He’s definitely not ready to do Quests, she thought, What is Jirgalang thinking?

Kichiro, however, did his best to prepare himself. The next morning, when the night was still slinking off to give way to the red skies of day, he was already in the training grounds, shivering in the cold. After downing a skin of fermented mare’s milk, almost retching at the taste (Peninsular people did not consume dairy products), he saddled his moody mare and rode her for hours. In three days, he could ride her quite comfortably, although his pace on his lame horse was incomparably slower than that of any of the many other Steppe Riders in the fields, all of whom were pure-blooded Red Tassels who had developed their Job since a tender age. They would watch Kichiro from afar and snigger at his city-dweller’s incompetence. In the last four days before Kichiro was scheduled to go Questing for Jirgalang, he practiced shooting his self-bow from atop his mare. Through a combination of hard work, determination and the bonuses conferred on him by his Steppe Rider Job, Kichiro managed to hit the straw targets on a fairly regular basis. Once again, however, he was riding awfully slowly when doing so and his arrows were nothing like the veritable lightning bolts that the common Red Tassel launched from his or her recurve bow.

‘You’re not bad,’ said Ilha at the end of the week, ‘For a seven-year-old.’

Kichiro did not take such comments to heart. He had been treated like an outsider his entire life, regularly beaten to a pulp by the children of Peninsular soldiers who died in the wars against Toyotomi’s samurai. He even took what Ilha said as a compliment. He had not had the privilege of growing up in the endless steppes of Red Earth Country where wild horses and camels roamed to develop the expertise of a Steppe Rider like the Red Tassels did. If you looked at it one way, he took a week to learn what a Red Tassel did in seven years. Besides, he would have liked to see the arrogant riders on the training ground try to carve out a living in the slums of the Morning Capital.

In the night before Kichiro was due to visit Jirgalang, he lay under piles of leather, his vision set on the shimmering canopy of star constellations and planets above. A kind tanner had allowed Kichiro to sleep there, given that the young outsider lacked a yurt and knowing first-hand how icy the nights in the steppe were. His fists clenched, he vowed to himself that he would show the Red Tassels of the Teal Banner that he was worthy to ride in their ranks.

When a guard came into Jirgalang’s tent the next morning to inform him that Kichiro the Foreigner was there to see him, his face darkened.

‘Enter!’

Jirgalang was a tall and slender fellow; he had the soft facial features, pale skin and doe-eyes of a Red Tassel noble clan with an excess of beautiful women in its family tree. Quite the contrast to the short and stocky Kichiro with his ruddy monkey face. It’s true what they say about the males of the Rising Sun Isles, thought Jirgalang, They really are little, ugly devil-dwarfs.

‘Good morning, Marshall!’ declared Kichiro perkily, bowing deeply.

Jirgalang ignored him, slowly sorting through a pile of papers.

Not deigning to look at Kichiro, he said, ‘A giant marmot is stalking the lands a day’s ride south of the main camp.’

Kichiro struggled desperately to keep a straight face. A giant marmot? I have to kill a giant marmot?

‘You are to hunt down and kill it,’ continued Jirgalang, his face expressionless, ‘Before it comes to terrorise the Teal Banner.’

You have received a Quest: Find and kill the giant marmot!