Godsbane book 1: Armageddon (Rewritten)

Chapter 1

 Nine days.

That's how long Rakei had been under siege. Nine days since the last army Egon had wanted to see had come to destroy his home. Nine days since Egon had learned that his king had been slain in battle, his kingdom, Zakmora, conquered, and that the messenger bringing the call to arms to Rakei had been killed. Nine hellish days.

Egon felt like he was boiling to death, wearing full battle armor in the middle of one of the hottest days in April. A fierce heat wave had scoured Rakei, and he felt like he was in the worst of it. Egon was the supreme general of all Rakeian military forces, on both land and sea. He was found stumbling towards the gates of Rakei at the age of ten, bloody and bruised, wearing only a scrappy tunic and torn trousers. Luckily for Egon, the lord of Rakei himself, William Marick, decided to raise him, instead of letting him be taken by the orphanage or adopted by a family that couldn't afford to feed him. As such, he was raised like royalty. Marick gave him the best education possible, hiring the most esteemed tutors to teach Egon.

But Egon was not interested in finances or poetry or mathematics, and though he learned them anyway, the only teacher he had ever liked was a man by the name of Jacque V'narti. Jacque was the commander of a warship called the Heron's Flight. It was the fastest cruiser in the fleet, twice the speed of some of the slower battleships. He had been hired by Lord Marick to teach Egon the art of war.

Over the course of thirteen years, Jacque taught Egon everything there was to know about combat. Egon learned how to use a sword, fight on horseback, keep his balance on a moving ship while fighting, and how to sail. On top of that, Jacque taught him to coordinate maneuvers on a large scale, use the terrain to the best advantage, and lead an army or fleet into battle and come out with light casualties. Under his tutelage, Egon became the most promising young general in the city, even leading the army into a few small battles against pirates and local bandits, every time emerging victorious. Over the years, he had gone up rank after rank until he became the official commander of the Rakeian army. He only was appointed Supreme General after the previous one had been seriously injured in a skirmish, fighting an enemy raiding party about a month before the invaders arrived at Rakei.

The 'enemy' was Berek-Hyi, a kingdom neighboring Zakmora directly to the west. Berek-Hyi had recently elected a new king after the previous one had been assassinated, with no heirs to replace him. This new king, known only as 'Kane', immediately set about to amassing his newly acquired armies and invading Zakmora. The war officially began on January 1st, when the armies of Berek-Hyi first marched through Zakmoran territory. It caused an uproar in both countries as it broke the treaty set between them a hundred years before, but Kane had no regard for any treaties, only expanding his already massive power.

Two months later, Kane met the full force of the Zakmoran armies in the battle of The Braitan Plains... and won. It was a bloody, brutal battle that nobody in Rakei had any knowledge of until one of the survivors of the battle reached the city gates and told Lord Marick what happened, and how his city was now the last obstacle between Kane and total domination over Zakmora.

Now Egon was doing everything he could to hold off the enemy as long as possible. Word had been sent overseas to the dwarves of Belentia, a close ally to Zakmora. If all went well, they would sent enough soldiers to help Rakei overpower the greatly weakened forces of Berek-Hyi and restore Zakmora to its former glory. Sufficient help was expected to arrive in a month, but first, Egon had to hold the city.

Rakei was not as much a city as what looked to be a couple of towns and several villages stuck together into one huge, ramshackle township. It was a strange mix between more modern stone buildings, like the houses of the rich and the town hall, and smaller, cheaper wooden houses and other peasant properties. Four long walls surrounded the city, three were made of stone, and the fourth was the sea. If Rakei were not a coastal city, where the east wall should have been were the docks, which spanned the distance in between the north and south walls so there was a docking pad touching the edge of both walls. Rakei was divided into five districts: one bordering the docks and the north wall, a second on the opposite side of the city, touching the docks and the south wall, a third nestled in by the north and west wall, the fourth by the west and south, and the last in the middle, surrounded by the rest of the districts. As such, the city was thought of as three rows, each equal in size. The top and bottom rows, being the first through fourth districts, were both divided into two districts, while the middle row was the fifth.