Chapter 128: The Visit of Sengel

Marriage within the year was, of course, an impossibility. Allen thought that at the very least, he would have to wait until the threat of the Easterlings was eliminated before asking for Yamila's opinion. Both of them had come to Middle-earth, and from the perspective of family, they were both on their own; whatever thoughts or issues they had, they could decide for themselves without needing to consider too many other things.

After Allen exchanged a few jokes with everyone and expressed his recognition and praise for their recent hard work, a simple banquet came to an end, and everyone returned to their respective posts, beginning to busy themselves with the matters decided upon at the meeting.

And time flew by in the state of busy work. Fatis spent only one week delivering the list of soldiers willing to become standing army members to Allen. The names of the 1,400 people, including the cavalry, were all included. After receiving the list, Allen not only paid the first month's salary in advance but also issued the back pay for the two months that had exceeded the limit to the soldiers stationed in various places.

Subsequently, the several shops and taverns officially opened by Wilderness Town were crowded with people in a short time. Goods and liquor sold out amidst the revelry of the soldiers and their families. At the same time, the blacksmith shop received many more orders than before. In one respect, Yamila's thinking was still correct: the first thought most people had after getting money was to purchase items they had long coveted.

Meanwhile, under Yamila's arrangement, the new residents found employers suitable for them and began a period of short-term labor. Of course, in Allen's vision, this situation would not last too long; with the development of commerce, he would create other job positions, allowing these people to live independently.

For instance, this time, as Manid began to oversee the construction of the market, in addition to heavy manual labor, some relatively easier job positions were added, such as street cleaning, clothing washing and mending, and food preparation. These things always needed people to do them, so it was better to let those new residents be responsible for these tasks. Although not many people were needed for the time being, it was, in any case, a good start.

Moreover, in his communication with Manid, Allen indicated that this market must be tidy and clean. It would be best if, during construction, the areas could be divided in detail according to the merchants' goods. Let them sell major categories of goods together; this would not only facilitate the residents' shopping but also make daily management and tax collection convenient.

By all means, do not have the salted fish and clothing stalls put together after it is built; that would be truly too unsightly.

As the market was gradually completed at the east gate of Wilderness Town, merchants also began to arrive in Rhovanion, driving carriages loaded with goods through the valley at the lower part of the High Pass.

According to Allen's requirements, most of the goods they brought were grain, though there were also some specialties belonging to their own homes, such as the dazzling and eye-catching silverware produced in Lindon, porcelain tableware fired in the Blue Mountains, the pipe-weed that Allen favored, and finally, some handicrafts woven by clever-handed women.

These exquisite goods caused a great impact on the residents who had once lived in poverty, especially those Woodland Residents who had once lived in the forest, relying on hunting and small-scale farming for a living.

And these residents, under Allen's generosity, suddenly found their pockets bulging recently; those exquisite goods were no longer things they could not afford in their eyes.

For this reason, the stalls set up by those merchants quickly gathered a considerable number of customers, and the goods were sold out in a very short time.

After selling out their goods, these shrewd merchants did not leave immediately. They also hoped to return to Eriador fully loaded with goods, selling products with Rhovanion characteristics to all parts of Middle-earth.

Some of them were very interested in the honey Allen had displayed last time and hoped to take some back; after all, sweets were a very popular commodity in this era.

Others hoped that Allen could help them make a trip to Dale and the Lonely Mountain to purchase some ingeniously crafted toys and finely made jewelry. Some even went so far as to ask Allen if he had any connections to the Woodland Realm, as they were also very interested in the goods produced by the Woodland Elves.

Regarding the requests of these merchants, Allen gave answers and help one by one and arranged guides to provide them with corresponding directions. Of course, Allen only arranged for people to lead the way; as for whether Bard, Thorin, and Thranduil were willing to receive them, that depended on the merchants' own abilities.

Regarding the market being built in Wilderness Town, these merchants also expressed a certain degree of interest. After all, this was a large town with 20,000 people living around it, its purchasing power was decent, and it was not too far from the realms of the Elves and Dwarves.

Several merchants immediately signed contracts with Manid to lease shops, and soon they would arrange for suitable candidates to open businesses here.

All of this was just as Allen had imagined. As for commerce, as long as there was a suitable environment and market, it would develop very quickly. After all, making money was nothing to be ashamed of being proactive about, and merchants were the kind of existence that could even give up their lives for the sake of profit.

As time passed, Fatis once again handed a list to Allen. It was the list of personnel between the ages of 18 and 35 in Allen's direct territory. Under the propaganda of the officials under Yamila, most of them were willing to become Citizen Soldiers, with the number reaching over 2,000.

That is to say, if Allen could provide a certain amount of equipment, he could now raise an army of nearly 4,000 people to head to the battlefield. Of course, Allen could not do this, because these people were only willing to be soldiers, not that they were already true soldiers.

Setting aside the equipment, these newly added Citizen Soldiers were either slaves of the Easterlings or newly arrived Northern Men. Unlike the Woodland Residents who fought against Orcish for years, the vast majority of them had adapted to the stable life of farming, so their combat effectiveness was generally not high. They still needed long-term training and the tempering of small-scale battles to truly play a role on the battlefield.

As for where to temper them, Allen had also thought about it. If there was an opportunity, in the two or three months after the autumn harvest, he would take these soldiers to Eriador and let the Northern Rangers help train them, and incidentally fight some small-scale battles with the dark forces that were gradually becoming active there.

Or heading to Lothlorien and clashing with the Orcish of Moria there was also a relatively good choice. Although there might be some problems with marching and fighting in winter, as long as logistics were well-guarded, the problems should not be significant.

In the meantime, after communicating with Fatis, Alayen, and Bandak, Allen revoked their titles of Legion Commander and replaced them with the title of Commander.

Because with the increase in soldiers and the fact that the locations needing to be garrisoned had also become more numerous, continuing to manage them according to different troop types had become somewhat inappropriate. Therefore, Allen intended to simply divide his thousands of soldiers into ten-man squads, hundred-man companies, and thousand-man battalions.

The 1,000 infantry who had become standing soldiers, excluding the crossbowmen, were evenly divided by Allen among the three of them to lead. Moreover, he would provide 200 sets of heavy infantry equipment within a year or two, allowing the equipment composition of their troops to reach a relatively balanced state. As for whether they would develop into special units with unique capabilities due to different garrison locations later on, that was a matter for the three of them to consider later; Allen would not participate.

Then, for the newly added Citizen Soldiers, he had them each manage 700 people, forming a complete thousand-man battalion under their command. The daily training and rotation work were to be handled by them respectively. The remaining Citizen Soldiers would become a reserve force to deal with emergencies and replenish soldiers who sacrificed in battle.

Fatis's position as Military Minister would not change because of this. In situations where Allen could not command in person, Fatis would still be the one in charge of military affairs.

As for the cavalry units and Desaiwei's horse archer units, they would be led by Allen himself. At the same time, Allen also allocated some horses from Horse Pasture Village to Fatis, Alayen, and Bandak, allowing them to form their own cavalry reconnaissance units.

Once these three units gradually matured, Allen would also be able to gather the weapons and equipment suitable for these Citizen Soldiers. By then, with 3,000 infantry plus hundreds of cavalry, Allen, with the help of his Dwarf allies, should be able to go head-to-head with Ashur. Even if he couldn't win, it wouldn't matter; didn't he still have the Elves of the Woodland Realm guarding the rear as a fallback? If he couldn't win, he could still run.

Therefore, before Sauron made any bigger trouble, Allen, once his army was formed, would actually be in an invincible position, though this would require several years of preparation.

And what Allen did not expect was that before he was ready, Gondor actually sent a small-scale cavalry unit composed of Gondor Knights, which arrived in Allen's territory when winter entered in the year 2942 of the Third Age. The leader was Sengel, the first heir to the throne of Rohan.

Sengel, who was 37 years old that year, had left Edoras early when he had just come of age due to his father's relationship, heading to Minas Tirith to serve the then Steward of Gondor, Turgon. In fact, if not for the matter of Gandalf seeking aid, he would have married Morwen, who was born in Lossarnach, the following year.

Allen knew a little about Sengel's affairs. This guy would reluctantly become the sixteenth King of Rohan in about ten years and would do a good job of restoring the royal dignity his father had lost during his reign.

His son, Theoden, would also lead the Rohirrim to support Gondor during the War of the Ring, win the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, and sacrifice his life there.

At this time, Sengel bringing the letter from the Steward of Gondor, Turgon, to Wilderness Town clearly meant that Gandalf's work of seeking aid had yielded results.

After settling Sengel and his party, who were exhausted from their journey, Allen opened the letter Turgon had given him.

In fact, Turgon was a very lucky Steward. During his reign, Gondor had not encountered any decent incidents. His father, Túrin II, who was also the twenty-third Steward of Gondor, had seen Ithilien invaded by Mordor during his reign, and it was only with the help of Rohan that they had repelled the enemy, for which Rohan lost two heirs to the throne.

Then, after Turgon took over, Mordor settled down because at that time Sauron was lurking in Dol Guldur, searching for his precious, the One Ring, and preparing to concentrate his power to plot against the Lonely Mountain, so the two sides lived in peace for nearly fifty years during this stage.

At this time, Turgon was already over eighty years old. His Numenorean blood was far from as pure as Aragorn's. In Allen's memory, he only lived to be over 90 years old. He might abdicate in a few years, and now Sauron was concentrating most of his energy on rebuilding Barad-dûr and had no interest in harassing Gondor on a large scale.

After Turgon's son, Ecthelion II, took office, he would not be as lucky as his father, because by then Sauron would have freed up his hands, and conflicts between Gondor and Mordor would become formally more frequent. By then, Gondor would not only have to face the Orcish of Mordor, but the Sea Raiders of Umbar, the Haradrim from the south, the Easterlings surrounding Mordor, and the Variags would all become opponents of Gondor.

Under the attacks from multiple sides, the situation in Gondor would take a sharp turn for the worse. But for now, the eighty-plus-year-old Turgon addressed Allen as King very politely in the letter, and at the same time expressed that Gondor would absolutely not stand idly by regarding the Easterlings ravaging Rhovanion. When there was a need, Allen could send a messenger to seek aid from him. For the sake of the friendship between Gondor and the Northern Men, he would certainly send an elite unit as support at that time to assist Allen in expelling the enemies invading Rhovanion. Of course, in the days to come, he also hoped that Allen could extend a helping hand when Gondor needed it.

Allen did not know how Gandalf had introduced him to Turgon. This title of "King," in front of the Steward of Gondor, Allen felt he might be somewhat unworthy of. After all, at this time, the population of Gondor was at least over 200,000. If they really wanted to conscript an army, tens of thousands of people would be no problem. It was just that Gondor's territory was large, there were too many enemies, and there were too many places that needed to be defended, so they couldn't concentrate the soldiers in one place.

But the fact was already so, and Allen could not show weakness in front of Sengel.

Although he would become a wise king in ten years, Sengel, who had traveled for months, was more or less unhappy in his heart at this time. Anyone who was dispatched by their own monarch to a place thousands of kilometers away to perform a mission when they were about to prepare for their wedding could not be without complaints. Especially when Sengel saw that the strength of Wilderness Town was far from as powerful as he had imagined, his attitude would naturally become less polite under the influence of various factors.

Through careful observation, Allen could naturally feel the sense of alienation hidden beneath the politeness. Thinking about it carefully, Allen could also figure out the reason for Sengel's attitude.

Therefore, at the banquet to entertain Sengel and his party, Allen gathered all his subordinates to accompany them, and also invited several Skin-changers to support the scene for him. Moreover, he let Grim perform a live transformation into a bear on the spot, making Sengel, who thought he was well-informed, become polite.

Looking at the Dwarves, Elves, and the tall human who could transform into a bear beside him, Sengel had some changes in his view of this unusually polite Northern leader. Even in Gondor, there were no Dwarves willing to serve humans for a long time, let alone staying for several years; most Dwarves came with invitations and left immediately after finishing their work.

As for Elves, there was no need to mention them. In Sengel's decades of life, the number of times he had seen Elves was very few, let alone having Elves as his subordinates; that was simply a pipe dream.

Sengel was a very intelligent person, otherwise, he could not have become Turgon's capable subordinate and gained the title of "wise" in the future. At this moment, the various signs in this banquet hall all indicated that this young man smiling brightly before his eyes was a very powerful lord, at the very least, his relationship with the Elves and Dwarves was extraordinary. Then, perhaps Gandalf's words had not been exaggerated.

With the change in attitude, the conversation between Sengel and Allen gradually became warm. After learning Allen's true age, Sengel was full of surprise and couldn't help but ask if Allen had Numenorean blood. After all, he was currently serving the Steward of Gondor, and discovering Numenoreans living abroad was an extremely important matter for Gondor.

After careful consideration, Allen shook his head and said he was not sure about his own bloodline. In fact, Allen certainly knew he did not have Numenorean blood, but he could not publicly state it. On one hand, he was long-lived and revealed knowledge that ordinary humans should not possess; without a good family background, it was difficult to explain all this.

On the other hand, from his heart, Allen hoped that he could have a Numenorean identity. This way, things would be much more convenient for him to do in the future, and when communicating with Rohan, Gondor, and the Northern Rangers, there would be an innate bonus to favorability. And if he wanted to pretend, almost no one could see through it.

But Allen did not want to explain it himself; he hoped that others would guess this result.

Sure enough, Sengel, who already had his own calculations, became even more enthusiastic at this time, and the relationship between the two gradually turned toward friendship during their conversation.