Chapter 129: Diplomacy and Construction

Human emotions are complex; when preconceptions are broken, a shift in attitude can occur extremely rapidly, as was the case with Sengel, who had only been in Rhovanion for about ten days.

For this first heir of Rohan, it took only a few days for his attitude toward Allen to shift from slight dissatisfaction to the feeling of having met a kindred spirit too late.

Having grown up watching his father live with boundless extravagance and having served the Steward of Gondor for over a decade, Sengel had seen many different types of human lords, but this was his first time seeing one who lived as simply as Allen.

Through his observations during this time, Sengel learned that Wilderness Town had at least nearly twenty thousand residents, yet despite possessing so many subjects, Allen lived in nothing more than an unremarkable three-story house.

Not to mention compared to the "Gondor Royal City" at the highest level of Minas Tirith, even his father's Meduseld was far more majestic and magnificent than where Allen lived; this house was at most comparable to the dwellings of the wealthier Manor Lords in Gondor.

He had only one personal maid to attend to him, while most of the others were servants responsible for cleaning the house; his attire could not be called luxurious either, and only that set of combat gear truly looked expensive and was extremely rich in the Elf style—even in Gondor it could be called rare, and as for the Kingdom of Rohan, not even the King's treasury possessed such exquisite armor.

Sengel saw a full fourteen sets of such armor here, but since these were items used to save lives on the battlefield, Sengel did not consider it squandering, no matter how high the cost; after all, nothing is more precious than life.

By comparison, the living standards of the various lords of Gondor far exceeded Allen's; while the castles in their territories could be attributed to deep family foundations, the countless slaves following them whenever they came to Minas Tirith for banquets were enough to show that they were far inferior to this new friend of his in terms of frugality.

Regarding frugality, Sengel actually had his own views: when a commoner eats ordinary meals every day, that is not called frugality, because that is already the standard of living they have struggled to achieve with all their might; and when a lord possesses a castle and slaves, eating exquisite food for three meals a day, that is not necessarily luxury either, as long as one does not exploit others for the sake of a decadent life or affect the development of the territory or the country, it is not really an issue.

However, his father Fengel and his newly met friend seemed to be at opposite extremes; through communicating with the residents living in Wilderness Town, Sengel learned that the living standards of the people here were quite good, and no worse than those of the ordinary residents of Minas Tirith.

Moreover, the various gossip circulating in the Wilderness Town tavern all indicated that the lord here was quite wealthy, as if countless gold and silver had been moved from the great halls of the Lonely Mountain into the treasury of Wilderness Town as a reward from the Dwarf King Thorin II to the Northern Men after that great battle at the Lonely Mountain.

In other words, as the lord of Wilderness Town and an extremely wealthy one at that, Allen actually had enough strength to live a more comfortable life, but he did not; instead, he used various policies to channel more wealth to his subjects, making the lives of the ordinary residents better and better.

This stood in stark contrast to Sengel's father, who had become estranged from the various Marshals of Rohan due to his monopolization of various interests.

The longer he lived here and the more he learned about his new friend, the higher Sengel's favor for Allen grew; by the two days before his departure, the two had almost become close friends who cherished each other.

As for Sengel, Allen also had a good impression of him; according to Allen's thinking, once he built his castle at Dol Guldur in the future, in a sense, he would already be a natural neighbor and ally to Rohan.

Furthermore, most of the subjects under Allen's rule were Northern Men from the Kingdom of Rhovanion, and if one were to trace their origins, they were properly family with Rohan five hundred years ago; if one were to discuss genealogy, one could surely find all sorts of connections.

Setting aside these geographical and historical factors, Sengel himself was worth befriending; the weight of his identity as the first heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Rohan needed no discussion, and his own behavior and speech were quite polite, and he was very sincere in his dealings with others.

At the very beginning, Allen had sensed a faint sense of distance from Sengel; this manifestation showed that this person was not hypocritical—if he didn't like something, he didn't like it, and he would tell you directly without needing you to guess.

Such people are actually relatively easier to deal with.

Allen actually had a negative example around him, and that was the former Town Mayor of Long Lake Town, Stephen; in terms of character and disposition, Allen knew he was a jerk, but he appeared very harmless and was quite skilled with his silver tongue.

This resulted in Allen not being able to find a good reason to target him; he couldn't just pin a "groundless" charge on him, as he didn't want to change his surname, and he was the eldest in his family, not the ninth.

Moreover, as the two gradually understood each other and resolved their mental knots, Sengel immediately changed his attitude and offered some explanation to Allen for his previous rudeness.

In fact, when Gandalf had praised Allen as peerless in the world in the Tower of Ecthelion before Turgon and a group of members of the Council of Gondor, Sengel, who was listening on the side, naturally had many speculations in his heart, which led to a great discrepancy between what he saw after arriving at Wilderness Town and his expectations.

After all, Wilderness Town was a town established only a few years ago; although it was developing rapidly, it certainly could not be compared to Minas Tirith, which had existed for thousands of years, or Edoras, which had a history of several hundred years, so it was normal for Sengel to have some doubts about Gandalf's words.

Of course, the thousand-kilometer journey over mountains and rivers had indeed worn down Sengel's limited good mood; this was only because he had grown up in Calenardhon and was extremely familiar with the surrounding environment, and the various Marshals of Rohan who came along had also taken good care of the small team led by their crown prince, which allowed Sengel to rush from Minas Tirith to Wilderness Town without stopping for over two months.

That he was able to arrive here safely was also thanks to the great battle that took place at the Lonely Mountain the year before, as well as the cleanup of Dol Guldur by the bigwigs of the White Council; otherwise, his small team of a dozen people would easily have been chased in a panic by the once-arrogant Orcish.

It was foreseeable that to return to Minas Tirith, Sengel would have to go through this process all over again, and he had his own concerns; in fact, Sengel was not particularly willing to travel through the lands of Rohan, as he worried that his father, who was already somewhat mentally unstable, would force him to do something.

After all, his old father was already over seventy years old, and the relationship between the two had deteriorated to a certain degree; even for his own wedding, Sengel did not want to invite Fengel to attend, and if he were forced to be taken back to Edoras during the return journey, it would directly affect Sengel's wedding next year, and he would have nowhere to cry then.

Meanwhile, Turgon, who was already nearly ninety, naturally could not know the details of his shrewd and capable subordinate; he only thought that the relationship between Sengel and his father was stiff, but they were father and son after all, so how bad could the relationship be? That was why he had entrusted the task of liaison and observation to Sengel.

One could not refuse a task arranged by one's own lord, but that could not stop Sengel from being in a terrible mood, so it was natural that his attitude toward Allen was poor at first; Allen, who had some understanding of Sengel's life, figured all this out in a short time, did not mind these things, and tried to make Sengel change his attitude toward him through some means.

The effect was also better than he had imagined.

In Allen's view, getting along with neighbors in his own camp was something a qualified king must do, and dealing with Sengel was far easier than dealing with Fengel; that extremely greedy guy had actually sent a messenger two months ago, but the conditions proposed were simply unacceptable to Allen.

The old king mentioned in the letter that if he wanted Rohan to support Rhovanion, Allen would at least have to pay wealth enough to fill an entire hall.

Although he did not know how this guy found out that Wilderness Town now had a great deal of gold and silver treasure, Allen would absolutely not indulge this kind of extortion.

After treating the Rohan rider who delivered the letter well, Allen had Yamila write a tactful letter of refusal and let him take it back, and the matter was left at that; moreover, Allen was not worried about offending the current King of Rohan at all—how many more years could Fengel live? Getting along with his son Sengel was the correct path.

Then, not two months later, Sengel arrived with a letter from the Steward of Gondor; one could only say that this was fate.

Because he was anxious to return to Gondor, Sengel, having observed for a period of time in Wilderness Town, also felt that the mission was mostly complete, so he chose a morning when the temperature was not so cold to bid farewell to Allen and prepare to return to the south.

Allen, knowing why Sengel was in a hurry to return, did not try to keep his new friend, but to his surprise, just as Sengel was about to leave, he formally issued an invitation to Allen, hoping that he could go to Gondor on the Harvest Day next year, which was September 21st of the Third Age 2943, to attend his wedding with Mowen.

Facing his friend's warm invitation, Allen readily agreed, but at the same time, he also indicated that Rhovanion was in a troubled time, and if he really could not get away by then, he would arrange for an envoy to represent him in congratulating Sengel on his wedding.

Sengel naturally knew how busy the daily work was for an excellent leader managing a piece of land, not to mention that there were enemies lingering at his doorstep; for him, it was enough that Allen could give such a promise, and then, under Allen's gaze, the team from Gondor set foot on the road home.

With Sengel's departure, Allen's life once again entered a busy state; this busyness did not mean there were too many documents to sign or trivial work that required him, the king, to handle personally—after such a long period of development and the popularization of education, the officials under the Cabinet were already very perfect, with a set of effective ways of doing things, no longer like before where Allen had to pay attention to what the working laborers ate.

Most of Allen's time was actually wasted on the road; the reconstruction of Dale and Long Lake Town, the renovation of Stier Mining Town, and the defensive works of Heidelberg were all going on at the same time, and he also needed to understand the basic situation of Ioviah.

So for the better part of this year, he had not actually stayed in Wilderness Town for long, but had run through every territory; currently, the construction of Dale was almost coming to an end, the old high tower clock tower had been mostly restored, and people had begun to tend the fields in the valley, restoring the abundance and prosperity of the past; it was estimated that by the summer of next year, the reconstruction work of Dale would be almost finished.

As for Long Lake Town, after half a year of reconstruction, a circle of basic city walls had been built at the location designated by Allen; with a great enemy at the gates, nothing was safer than building city walls, but the area covered was large, and the construction speed of brick city walls could not be fast at all; according to Bard's estimation, it would probably take until the end of next year to build something of a shape, but the port was already mostly built and could be put into use.

Heidelberg, on the other hand, had gained a certain defensive capability after such a long time of construction, and the watchtowers on the city walls were enough to overlook a large area on the opposite bank of the river, fully capable of serving as a standard defensive work to resist enemy attacks, but the area was still a bit small; Caroline's villagers had built a village near the castle and, on the original basis, reclaimed a considerable amount of land and settled there.

In Allen's view, Heidelberg was very much in line with that standard medieval castle defense system: when a crisis was encountered, the villagers would take their families and property to hide in the castle, and wait until the enemy left before coming out to start life again; this situation had happened countless times in medieval Western Europe, and the lords living on that land relied on this way to resist the invasions of the Vikings.

It was just that the castle Allen built was not purely to protect the property and lives of the subjects during the war; it also had to stand here like a nail, guarding the entrance to Allen's base camp, and at the same time, it needed to serve as a connection point between the eastern and western regions of Rhovanion.

So Allen had already arranged another task for Tier, which was to build another castle on the opposite side of the Running River, and then connect the two castles with a bridge, imitating The Twins of the Riverlands on the continent of Westeros; Allen had long felt that that castle was very interesting, and now he also had the idea of building one himself.

This would not only facilitate the passage of merchants or troops in the future, but also be more conducive to Ailong's forces entering the eastern region of Rhovanion; of course, all these things had to wait until the Easterlings were repelled.

After all, these guys would not just watch as Allen built a castle on the opposite bank of the river.