The Nachtreider: the Vampire Warrior

By Charles Schabel

Gregor, a peasant farmer, is arrested for the murder of Baron Huebart Rockmorge. Huebart’s younger brother Robart sentences Gregor to death by torture. Robart, the new baron, wants to make an example of Gregor in order to eliminate all thought that he killed his brother to inherit the powerful baronage, as well as to discourage any other peasant from attacking those of noble birth. After nine days of agony in Robart’s torture machine, ‘The God of Pain’, Gregor is rescued by the legendary Lilitu, the first vampire. She transforms Gregor into a nachtreider, a kind of vampire that maintains his human personality and memory through the transformation, the kind of vampire she is.
After three days in the grave Gregor rises with new powers: superhuman strength and speed and the ability to transform to a bat or wolf. Gregor, enraged by his mistreatment, schemes to destroy the evil baron. Lilitu, however, can’t allow him to do this. She has to form an alliance that includes Gregor, herself, and Baron Rockmorge. Lilitu needs them working together to defeat her ancient enemy, the Verdalack Quentinella and her vast armies of verdorts, thralls and human warriors. The Verdalack has three nachtreiders in her employ: Valena, Carmilla and Borneo, each created by Lilitu by mistake.
The Verdalack seeks to capture Lilitu and use her blood to create more nachtreiders. Of the more than one-thousand daylight resting places Lilitu had, all but three have been discovered and destroyed by the Verdalack and her minions. The only place that the Verdalack cannot reach her by day is the mountain fortress of Baron Rockmorge. If the nearly impervious castle of the Rockmorges is taken, then Lilitu is lost. Lilitu cannot make a nachtreider out of just anyone, they must have the right blood, and be willing to forgo the promise of heaven to make the transformation. Gregor’s desire for revenge against the baron drove him to become a nachtreider, the very ambition he must give up in order to fight an enemy he never heard of before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Schabel
• Release date: May 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301588916

Book preview

The Vampire Warrior

The Nachtreider

C.R. Schabel.

.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 C.R. Schabel

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Table of Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II: Night Lessons

Chapter III: A Private Battle

Chapter IV: A Night Interrupted

Chapter V Prisoner by Surprise

Chapter VI: Melog the Ogre-bane

At times Evil can be set against Evil,

For the greater Good,

Chapter I

When the prisoners heard the hob-nailed boots grind against the stone floor, they all fell silent, listening for the click and squeak of a key turning in a cell door, dreading that it would be his or her time to be taken to the torture chamber.

When the others heard the captain of the guard pound on the thick oak and iron door of Gregor's cell, their panic reduced to mere anxiety; they were not going to provide entertainment for the baron that day. The captain-guard's porcine features twisted into a sadistic smile, he contemplated the prisoner within for a few moments, imagining what awaited him, told the lesser ranked guards to wait in the hallway and be on hand if he had any trouble with the prisoner. Then he kicked Gregor and roused him from his drugged sleep. Old 'Pig-face' brutalized anyone baron Rockmorge placed within his power; his cruelty motivated both to please his master and also to avenge the years of insults and teasing he endured for his ugliness. He would enjoy the spectacle of Gregor's torments and hoped that this weakling wouldn't go in and out of a faint, or die to soon and rob his audience of a prolonged entertainment.

Move you murdering scum! he hissed at Gregor, You have a date with the baron's new toy.

Gregor, awakened by the guard's kick, groaned and stood up slowly. At first he thought of attacking old 'pig-face'. He was still disoriented from the drugged wine mixture the baron's guards forced him to drink, but when his mind cleared he remember where he was and everything that had happened, all the horror of the last two days: his capture, when Rockmorge's solders rode into his fields, tramped a path through his half-grown barley-grain, surrounded him and without a word: dismounted drew their swords, apprehended him, chained his hands, marched him into a prison wagon, took him up the mountain, and then finally down into Rockmorge's dungeons. Gregor had no opportunity to make a statement or protest his innocences. Less than an hour after he was thrown into his cell, a magistrate, accompanied by a half dozen guards, entered and read to him from a scroll in a matter-of-fact nature, he said: You are hereby condemned to death by torture.

Gregor was stunned, confused, close to panic; he couldn't ask the obvious questions: what crime had he committed, or why it was so serious that some less painful execution would due? He was left alone in the grim, grey walled cell, with only a tray of food and drink, visible only after his eyes adjusted to the poor lighting. Perplexed at first, he just sat on the floor and tried to decide what to do. Could he try to escape, chained and caged, or would it be better if he demand a trial so he could prove his innocence. He had some savings hidden in his house, some gold, more silver and quite a lot of copper, could he get to his money and use it to bribe a guard into letting him go? But he remembered that the guards feared the baron's wraith so much that it would take a bribe a thousand times what he could offer for any of them to risk his fate to let him go. He briefly considered killing himself, but rejected that option almost immediately. Suicides were damned. Whatever tortures even baron Rockmorge could invent were petty compared to an eternity of suffering. Besides that, Gregor still held to the hope that the real criminal, guilty of whatever crime he was condemned for, would be found and punished instead of him. He considered and reconsidered his limited options for the next two days, whenever he could calm his fear, or outrage, long enough to form thought. Why had the recently installed baron condemned him? He never had seen the new baron Rockmorge before, and his older brother only once. Then he remembered. The old baron had died unnaturally; his death was rumored to be a murder. Some even suggested, as subtly and secretly as possible, that the new baron had something to do with it.

Am I blamed for a killing, a baron killing? He knew that the worst punishments were saved for commoners who killed those of noble birth, but he held on to the hope that he was found guilty of some other offense. It would mean a much less painful execution if so. That hope died when the guards came for him and told him the baron was going to effect his demise personally. Rockmorge only did that for special events.

Gregor's mind raced with panic. What could he do with his hands chained before him and his legs shackled tightly so that he could only walk with small steps and he couldn't kick at all. On either side of him, holding an arm each were two large, strong, armed and armored warriors. Gregor briefly planned to grab a dagger or a sword from one of them and fight his way out. He could wield a sword two-handed, so his shackled hands wouldn't be a complete hinderance. He'd most likely loose the fight, and die much quicker and with far less pain than whatever hell baron Rockmorge intended for him; even if he were only wounded and weaken by the guards, he'd be left unable to survive as much torture. But he found, as he had dreaded, that no matter how hard he struggled, he couldn't pull free of the guard's grip.

While Rockmorge supervised the final preparations of his god-torture-machine and made sure all the gears and pulleys were in perfect alignment, well lubricated and turning smoothly, quietly: his guards force-marched the prisoner down the stone hallways; ( and, as it turns out, to a destiny neither he or Rockmorge every imagined). Gregor's fear was not of death itself - for all that lived had to die sometime - but for the form his dying would take, and how long he would have to endure unimaginable agony before all life left his body and put him beyond the reach of the baron. Everyone who lived under his rule knew that Baron Rubart Rockmorge studied torment and the fear of torment fanatically. He boasted of it: Torture, withheld, threatened or applied; governs most effectively.

Gregor's panic knew no limits, he howled, until his voice grew to sore for it, then he groaned and begged for mercy in harsh, desperate whispers, he protested his innocence in one breath then repented the murder with his next; anything to avoid The God of Pain. The culmination of baron Rockmorge's satanic genius was to be brought to bear on Gregor, alone, helpless, stripped of his humanhood, his dignity. Fear's fires roared through him. He trembled; sweat flowed from him and soaked his cloths, in spite of the cold underground dungeon. He begged his guards for a swift slash of their swords, but they refused: The baron gonna use his machine on someone and he said if he don't get you, he'd get one of us. the guard on his right told him, the other just nodded in agreement.

The door to the torture chamber was left open, within, Gregor saw Baron Rockmorge standing tall and proud, by his latest invention 'The God of Pain'. Gregor's mouth grew dry with terror. He looked from the baron to his machine. It was worse than a rack, worse than anything, it was dreadful just to see from the hallway. The god of pain was twelve feet long and six feet wide; the complex display of gears and pulleys shone the silver gray of Rockmorge's famous steel. Though the mechanism's precision and symmetry radiated a polished beauty, to Gregor it was like seeing a giant's hands grope from the deepest pit of hell to seize him.

The guards dragged Gregor through the door and held him up while the black-hooded executioners showed him the complex machine he was soon to be a part of, a mechanism designed to punish it's victim in any of a variety of ways which included: burning, crushing, cutting blades, caustic liquids, stretching, gouging, ripping and slow laborious twisting of bone and flesh. The torturers detached some units from the rest and held them before Gregor while each of their exact functions were explained. They twisted noiselessly on and off valves that controlled the flow of hot steam and then demonstrated the hand blown glass vials filled with primitive acids and designed to release one drop at a time. Rockmorge had even devised a way for his 'toy' to continue functioning with no one working it, to give time off to the tormentors without relieve for the tormented. A nest of flame-ants were kept under the machine, the stinging biting insects were always angry, hungry and with the twist of a handle an executioner could release them in any number he wished.

With a last surge of desperate strength, Gregor broke the grip of his guards, threw himself prone before Rockmorge and slithered like a worm along the floor. All pride and dignity gone, all rage given up on, Gregor was panic and humiliation: Please, please! You are a great baron, I'm a nothing, it won't do you no good to torture me! If I must die, because you need someone to die, I'll do it! But don't torture me!! Let me die quick, and, if it does you some good, I'll forgive you for do'n it to me.

The baron at first seem moved by the prisoner's pleas, he found the look of hope in his eyes amusing. However, his softened expression soon grew harder than before: Much as it pains me, I will try my best to continue without your forgiveness. Rockmorge said, then signaled his executioners to proceed.

Four strong guards hoisted the prisoner and hauled him to the mechanism. Gregor was strapped down in it more then on it. The executioners had opened up a cavity within the machine that was roughly in the outline of a supine human being. They had measure Gregor previously, so they already had the machine adjusted precisely to his dimensions. Gregor squirmed ineffectively in their grip. They first strapped his ankles, then his wrists, and then more straps were wrapped around his legs and upper arms. His chest and waist were belted down. The black-masked men even immobilized his head and neck with leather and metal. When they finished, he could move nothing but his eyes. A mask of steel fit over his face and locked over his lower jaw, this allowed the baron to open and close his mouth with the touch of a lever!

Why are you doing this to me? Gregor muttered with his jaw locked he was barely understandable.

You murdered my brother, and forced me to take over the baronage. I was happy with my idyll time and smaller share of my families fortune, now you changed all that. I have to work hard and long to run a baronage, particularly one this size, Rockmorge leaned over and whispered to Gregor, To secure my position as baron and eliminate all suspicion that I had anything to do with Huebart's murder; I have to avenge his death with the most painful execution I can inflict. Fortunately I just developed the means to do so. You will be the first one entertained by 'The God of Pain'. I ordered my guards to keep you well fed,healthy and strong; to assure that you will stand up to a prolonged execution. You will experience infinite pain, or as closed to it as possible, this has been an ambition of mine since I was a boy. It isn't so simple, I must balance the intensity and the duration of your execution so as to maximize your torment. To hard a twist or to hot a flame can cause premature expiration, to light an application will spare you from greater pain.

You're mad and evil! You can't treat people like this and get away with it. Gregor speech was distorted so much by the steel mask he was forced to wear that hardly a word was understood, but the baron and the others could guess what his was saying, his tone told them more than they wanted to know. After examining his prisoner's preparations and inspecting his machine one more time, Rockmorge ordered the execution to begin.

Stage one Rockmorge said, then held up a small bottle, We prepare the prisoner with this. It prevents fainting and excites the nerves, increasing the sensitivity to pain. A happy happenstance that a troupe of traveling actors must use Rockmorges' bridge twice a year. Among them was a flute player who also sold the formula, for a reasonable price (three silver pieces plus the right to keep his head on for not asking for more). So that now I can use it to help you realize the error of your ways, your teacher? pain; harsh and durable. Be ready sir, for the lesson of your life.

He then forced Gregor to swallow a bitter, thick, brown liquid, the anti-fainting potion. After a few minutes, he began to feel the effects of it. His nerves increased their sensitivity, his limbs shook with the mere discomfort of his confinement. His arms and legs became unbearable restless, the urge to move them was intense. He became more awake then at any time of his life, more aware of everything that touched him, the bare metal felt like ice, his cloths itched, every sight and sound was magnified. The dim light burned his eyes like a noon day sun, his own heart-beat thundered in his ears.

Rockmorge waited until the potion started to work. To maximize agony he wanted it's greatest effect to coincide with his most brutal torture. The baron had a talent for torment, a well practiced talent.

Shall we move on to the next phase? The Baron asked, he heard no answer, which was what usually happened.

* * *

For nine days he was nothing but pain.

Each time Gregor thought the agonies could grow no worse, Rockmorge found more of his bone to grind to powder, or another nerve to tormented pitilessly. Even after days of suffering, Gregor feared that the worst was waiting. Death was his only hope of relieve.

Rockmorge considered bleeding a defeat, it wasn't painful compared to burning, twisting or stretching and it weakened his subjects, abbreviating their punishment

After each half day session, Gregor was cleaned, fed and left strapped in the metal maze of gears and pulleys with a few dozen flame ants to keep company with his other discomforts: the nausea caused by his tasteless meals, the helplessness of his complete immobility, the torment of his recent wounds and the racing stimulation of the Baron's anti-fainting elixir that kept him wide awake, his nerves hyper-sensitive, his muscles aching and squirming.

The baron calculated that it weakened prisoners more to struggle them back into 'The God of Pain' each day than to just leave them their for the night, force fed and mucked out.

Gregor resisted sleep, as much as he could. Until Rockmorge resumed his tortures the next morning, he only had to endured relatively mild discomforts, sleep would make this time seem to pass rapidly. Also sleep would invigorate him, the last thing he wanted.

While he fought to stay awake, a visitor came to him. Because he couldn't turn his head he failed to see something extraordinary. A small cloud of fine mist flowed under the door of the room, it drifted towards him, it stopped at the foot of the machine and coalesced into human form. Gregor was totally unaware of this intrusion; until she spoke to him.

We don't have much time so I will come to the point immediately. She said, We have only ten-thousand-four-hundred heart beats until dawn. We've no time for introduction.

There, hovering above him was the most beautiful face he had ever seen.

Am I dead. You're an angel (I hope). Did you come here to take me?

No, She said, and couldn't suppress a slight giggle at the idea that she was an 'angel' But I am here to give you a choice. You can die and stay dead, or you can die and come back as one such as me?

Gregor was confused, but elated, death, freedom from pain, and escape from the baron! Kill me, now, quick, and leave me cold dead! I don't want to come back to this hurt?

You won't return to this. You will become such as I am. You're soul and flesh will merge into one; you will gain enormous power... enough to destroy Rockmorge. But I can only give you the chance to return, final choice will be yours. You must give up any hope of an afterlife and resist the Light and the peace it offers to you.

Gregor was even more confused. The pain in his body diminished greatly when this strange woman drew near him. What was she, a dream, a madman's vision caused by his excessive pain?

Who are you, what's your name, what are you? Gregor asked.

The name I use now is Lilitu. She smiled slightly. "As to what I am... I had best explain that quickly, for we have only nine-thousand-ninety heart beats until dawn, damn summers and their early dawns!

I am a nachtreider, a kind of vampire. We nachtreiders are the only sort that rises from the dead without losing our human personalities. Lilitu could feel the dawn's first draw on her powers, if she did not finish with him soon, she wouldn't be able to teleport away to safety. Teleportation was the first power she lost when the sun's disc peered over the eastern horizon.

Though Gregor had been exhilarated at the prospect of death and freedom from the baron's malice, that wish was soon overcome by another, one that he dared not even dream of before: You said something about power to destroy Rockmorge?

Lilitu knew this was the weakest point of her plan, she had to have the help of another nachtreider soon, and she needed a safe haven such as Rockmorge's castle or she would be tracked down and capture by the enemy she had fought for more than half a century, in its latest and most powerful reincarnation; and for more than a thousand years in its previous lifetimes. She had to give Gregor the powers of a nachtreider but she could not let him kill Rockmorge. She needed both of them working together.

Pressed for time by the quickening light of day, she pulled one of the steel hinges free, twisting it until it broke, with only the strength of her small hand. "I have to get to you, to feed from you. But after that, I will give back some of what I take, that will reanimate your body. You, I mean the real YOU, will separate from your body while it reanimates, and you will be tempted by those on the other side to join them in the peace and freedom that they enjoy. If you join them, then your body will return to life as a mindless verdort. A soulless creature that can only obey its maker or one who wields the spell of control, a being of limited power. What I need to join me is another nachtreider, whose power far outstretches that of a mere verdort. The power of a nachtreider could even destroy this mountain fortress."

Lilitu did not tell Gregor that she had no intention of allowing him to destroy Rockmorge. She needed the shelter of his castle too much. The Verdalack's power was fast spreading and soon she would have no safe place to hide when the sun was high and her power was low or even nil. Her thousand resting places had been reduced to three; the Verdalack's agents had destroyed or captured all the others. The Verdalack had three nachtreiders as part of her forces, all nearly as powerful as Lilitu : Valena, Carmella and Borno, and so only with another nachtreider's help could she possibly stand against them, alone it would be hopeless.

She was brought out of her revelry by Gregor's inquiries and the quickening approach of day.

My time is short, she said, and then added, In more ways than one. You seem to have enough motivation to return to the living with your will intact, I hope you do.

She ripped through the steel and thick leather that imprisoned Gregor as if they were made of rotten straw and pulled him out of the devise.

I'll make you a nachtreider first; then work out the other problem. I could try to sneak you out of the castle, but I don't think I could get you passed all the guards. She would have rather been able to hide Gregor's body herself, so that it could not be destroyed before he had a chance to morph and then rise on the third night after he was buried.

She indicated the wreckage of The God of Pain, "I think I've done enough to reveal myself already.

Gregor viewed her demonstration of supernatural power wide-eyed. How could she rip through the God of Pain so easily? It was made of the strongest steel in the world! When she lifted him out of it, he could hardly feel her hands on him, only that they were icy cold, they seemed to draw the heat and life out of his flesh

I don't have no strength left, Gregor felt a sudden dizziness overwhelm him. His body grew numb, as if frozen; he could not move. Whatever it is you going to do, do it now.

Lilitu drew back for a moment. Her expression went from contemplative, to hungry, to lustful, to raging. Gregor grew afraid of her. He remembered tales told to him long ago by firelight, stories of creatures that rose from the dead with dreadful powers and fearful appetites: things that thirsted for blood and for souls. What would Gregor be giving up if he took this woman-thing's offer? Gregor could not sense his body, but his mind raced. An assortment of passions flooded over him, until one eclipsed all the former. Fear; he could put aside; the agony of 'the God of Pain' was behind him. Joy; with death and all its uncertainties as his best option? Joy was not even a consideration. Relief; now he was outside the reach of the evil baron, there was motivation for relief, but it was such a gentle emotion that it could hardly be noticed. Uncertainty; the woman who called herself Lilitu, who claimed to be a nachtreider, a vampire of some sort, why was she here with him, to take his soul, to lead him into even greater agonies, why would she do that? If she just wanted blood she could get it much easier from a sleeping villager or tavern drunk than she could from a prisoner of this torture chamber. Gregor concluded that she was sincere. As his contemplations meandered, he soon collided with a passion so intense, so overwhelming, that he would throw away his eternity just to appease it. Relief, joy, fear and anxiety were soon completely overcome by his fury!

Baron Rockmorge had stripped away every bit of his pride and manhood, what little he possessed at all. Gregor had never been ambitious, never wanted more than his little farm, to raise a tankard of good ale at the tavern after a hard day's work, to talk with his friends, sing a song in his cups, to joke with the bar maids, and, every so often, talk one of them into his bed. After he had enjoyed a few more years as a bachelor, he planned to take a wife and raise a family to add another generation to his humble lineage. All he wanted was the simple life, with the simple joys that came with it. He was no threat to the Baron, or to anyone else. He had killed no one. Yet, for some incomprehensible reason, Rockmorge had ripped his life away from him, accused him, found him guilty, and taken land that had been in his family for six generations; the land that had given life to him. None of Gregor's family had ever failed to bring in a crop each year and pay their full duties on it. They were good citizens. Yet Rockmorge took this from him, then not content with that, he invents this machine to torture him with, causing him humiliating fear, impotent rage, dread so intense that he prayed each night for his heart to stop. Gregor suffered more in his cell then he did his whole life, even before his torture began. Now, after nine days of hideous torment, his fear, his longing for the peace of death, yielded to a loathing so intense that Gregor would give up heaven and all hope of heaven just to appease it, with Rockmorge's foul blood.

Do what you will, make me a vampire, I want revenge, and I want to become the lowest demon in Hell, only to see Rockmorge there with me! Weakened, as he was Gregor could only gasp his words, but Lilitu knew that they rang loud from his heart!

Her own hunger, long appeased only with the tasteless blood of animals, began to overcome her senses. Her fangs plunged into Gregor's throat. Occupied with feeding on Gregor's truncated blood supply, she didn't even hear the door to the dungeon open. Then as she opened a vein in her wrist and dripped blood into Gregor's mouth; she didn't hear the baron approach her.

She did hear him draw his sword.

* * *

The baron liked to keep his dungeons full, either with spies from his enemies, traitors from Rockmorge's own territories, or just with the insane and criminal. He loathed wasted space and what was not filled with prisoners, he loaded with provisions. Deeper still under Rockmorge's fortress-city were his