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They said he appeared on a tall war-horse. All war commanders ride imposing steeds, after all, and the wraith (but some said he was a god, others Death himself) was known to appear only on battlefields, after all arrows had been fired and swords broken. Therefore, while different peoples gave him different names, the one he was most commonly referred to with was Warlord.
There was, in truth, no horse, but the wraith was tall, taller than any man or elf living, ethereal in appearance at first glance, but seemingly crowned with fire and shrouded in diamond. The young, mortally wounded soldier lying prone in the mud was reminded of a fox he had once seen as a child, red only in the upper part of her face and her back, a mix of shades of silver and white everywhere else. The elders in his village had said it was a good omen.
The spirit – ghost or divine being (or both) – stood upon a hillock, looking over the ravaged plain, taking in the groans of pain and the last pleas of the dying. The light of the full moon poured generously over the scene, but shied away from his form. Even the full moon was pale compared to the light that seemed to emanate from him. At last he moved, ambling among the debris, animate and inanimate, of war, and slowly came closer. The soldier had to close his eyes against the dazzling radiance, terror gripping his heart and silencing the pain for a moment. If only he could have moved his legs he would have left, would have sought help, would have gone back home. He couldn't feel his legs anymore. It had been his first battle, and it was to end like that.
“No need to be ashamed.”
The soldier reopened his eyes, and timorously looked up. The wraith now hovered right over him.
“War breaks us all.”
The blinding light was gone – no, not gone, clutched in his right hand.
The spirit crouched down and put his other hand to the youth's cheek, delicately, almost brotherly (or fatherly). His touch, solid and heavy as stone, was icy, but at the same time comforting, like a draught of cold water on a summer day. He was unlike what was depicted in ample detail in the legends and folk tales about him (though none had looked upon him long enough to impress his image in their minds and survived). He wasn't a ghastly skeletal figure come to scourge and haunt dead and dying soldiers. The young man could see him well now, make out his features – the features of a comely, proud face.
“Come with me, child,” he urged, “your companions and enemies – they all shall follow me. I will erase your suffering, you will forget all. You will serve a greater purpose than the insignificant struggle you sacrificed your life to today, but I will treasure that sacrifice, and remember.”
The spectre's lips didn't move, but the soldier heard his imperious voice sharply in his head (it sounded, in fact, like it swathed the whole battlefield, like it could have oozed into the very marrow of his bones).
“Come, little child. Your brothers await, and mine. Your father and your father's father already swell my army, in the name of my own.”
“A-are you -” the youth's own strangulated voice broke, and he wasn't even sure what he would have asked. Maybe 'are you a god?'. There wouldn't have been anything wrong in following a god. Just like there wouldn't have been anything wrong in escaping from the pain that racked him. The fox perhaps had really been a good omen (and wasn't it possible that such a singular creature had been but a different manifestation of the same entity? Perhaps his destiny had been sealed the day he met that fox).
“I am no wraith, child, nor am I a god,” the apparition smiled, and the very denial convinced the soldier of his divinity, because who else could have disclosed even inchoate thoughts? “I am the son of Fire.”
Fire. Fire was dangerous and untrustworthy, they said, it destroyed just as easily as it created, and more thoroughly, but at that moment all the young man could think of was the hearth in his own home and its gentle, nurturing heat. The spirit held out both arms and he surrendered himself to their embrace. Light enveloped him, and with the last flicker of consciousness he saw hundreds other ghosts rise all around him.
*
Under the full moon, Maedhros son of Fëanor surveyed his ghost-army, the Silmaril he had taken with him to death and which had given him subsistence beyond death shining on his breast.
It grew swiftly. He had led soldiers for most of his incarnate life, he was a master of suave persuasiveness. The only difference now was that the soldiers were already dead before they entered his service. Humans never wanted for reasons to fight, providing him with plenty of occasions to reap torn souls off battlefields, strip them of their individuality and douse them in the same light that had put him beyond the reach of even the Valar.
The light that was supposed to heal the world, but which – he had perceived it clearly in the coruscation of his second awakening – would, on its own, only anaesthetize it, put it to sleep, numbing it to pain (and thus the Valar had wanted to appropriate the Silmarilli). There could never be true life without misery. He had learnt it early on, from his father, who had grown up with sorrow and confusion as his constant companions in the land of bliss. He would make sure the Valar understood it too, before he excised them from the world as one lances a boil. The Valar would have no defence against an army nurtured in the light, now that he knew it for what it was (his father had surely known it too). The light which had ceased to be theirs the moment his father had harnessed it with his own will and ingenuity.
Resisting the call of Námo had been easy. It had been the last of his father's gifts to him. He had renounced expiation and forgiveness by choosing to take his own life (it was his last crime and his last affront). He would have found no peace in Mandos – it would have been a place of captivity and sufferance little different from Angband. So his father had called out to him in the imminence of death, forcefully, and lovingly, with the familiar bite of his temerity (nothing had ever been able to subdue it, and it was no doubt accounted his greatest offence), and the light had wrapped around his fëa like his father's arms used to envelop him in their strengthening embrace as soon as the last agony of his hröa was over.
He turned from the silent assembly of ghosts that seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon towards the western sea, then up at the sky, where the second Silmaril twinkled at him as if in readiness (his brother had the third). Time was running out, but not for him. Time was finally on his side.