The air was oppressively thick and the sun's heat was equally unbearable in the Eastmarsh. Fortunately, few besides the men stationed at Swampwatch that had to suffer such weather. Swampwatch was a large stone keep in the middle of an unnavigable sea of mangroves and stagnant pools. A long, winding road from the north, the only one through the Eastmarsh to Azraca, transformed into a raised highway as it neared the Swampwatch. The Swampwatch itself was a castle built on top of this road, with numerous portcullises and murder holes guarding the tunnel through the castle from the open highway. Along the sides of the causeway rose several squat, stone archer towers, connected to the main keep by rickety rope bridges.

The keep proper and the nearby guard towers along the causeway seemed to simply rise out of the swamp. While such loose foundations made the towers treacherously lean and slowly sink into the mud to be claimed by the marsh, the castle itself was built atop a hill and it was strong. With no materials to build siege weapons on site and no real room to set them up, as well as the extreme difficulty that would be involved in simply moving off the road and around the castle, the Swampwatch was actually very effective at protecting the realm from northern invaders. It was not a large garrison, though, manned by only a few hundred Strazari.

Amaan awoke when the sun was already high in the sky. Slowly he got to his feet from his small cot within the barracks, careful not to disturb the others. He walked down the dimly lit room to find the others on his watch, nudging awake those that were not yet stirring. The soldiers silently left the room, trudging down a corridor to the adjacent armory. There they took off their bedclothes and equipped their uniforms, the standard bronze and leather armor of the Strazari. Though their armor was identical, they each had white tabards with their own coat of arms sewn or dyed onto the fabric. That way they could be told apart from one another even with their masks and helmets covering their faces, and the men of more renowned houses could flaunt their superiority to their fellow soldiers that came from humbler beginnings.

Amaan was a noble, the second son of a Baig, though there were a few men in the garrison that were above his station, being relatives of Emirs. Amaan left the armory with his falchion at his hip and his composite bow in its case, as the moist air could damage its glues if he left it exposed while on watch.

Amaan and the other men that had the afternoon watch that day ascended several fleets of stairs as they navigated the dark and maze-like corridors. The fortress was intentionally confusing and labyrinthine to make it more defensible, though it also proved to be a nuisance to the defenders at times. At last the men arrived atop the battlements and made their ways to the various watchtowers protruding from the bastion that was Swampwatch.

Almost immediately upon relieving the previous watch and assuming their positions, the Strazari guards were assailed by swarms of mosquitoes and other insects that plagued the Eastmarch. It was no wonder that the Eastmarsh was wilderness; any fools that tried to establish a settlement in the marsh would be eaten alive by leeches, insects, and worse things that inhabited the waters. Few caravans even attempted to traverse the Eastmarsh, despite the effort that the Dominion had gone through to create a decent road through it to the Golden Lands beyond. The merchants seemingly preferred the more dangerous and lengthy North Pass, or simply sailing down the coast in ships.

Amaan lit a torch of incense, which helped to stave off the swarms. Having been stationed at this hellish garrison for half a year now, he had grown somewhat used to the incessant itching that the relentless insects mercilessly inflicted upon the men. There were half a dozen Mazmen in the garrison, so high was the number of men who caught diseases and other ailments from the swamp fumes and mosquitoes. Amaan broke off a hunk of bread to break his fast. As he ate his meal, he lazily stared into the distance, looking at the raised road that started at the swamp's border, continued clean through the portcullis beneath his feet and through the castle, and then finally made its way to the wealthy port of Alaba.

The road was deserted as usual; a fantastic waste of money. Or was it? The Azrac's eyes narrowed into slits as thin as a sheet of papyrus as he squinted down the road. It appeared that a large host was approaching, too many men to count. Without thinking, Amaan reached for a nearby horn and blew it to indicate people traveling on the road. The others lazily looked out of curiosity, expecting to see a few lonely figures trudging down the road, or perhaps a single wagon, but instead they saw what could be a host of a hundred men, at least. Though the men were a long ways down the road, barely within sight of those atop the battlements, many of them still glimmered in the sun like the jewels of a Sultan. They seemed to be wearing metal armor.

The men atop the garrison unsheathed their powerful composite bows and began gently tugging at the strings, back and forth, loosening them up in preparation for combat, if that was what was to come. Amaan, as the commander of this watch, sent one of the men into the castle to summon more guards to come atop the battlements. No doubt they would want to see whoever was coming, and if the approaching men turned out to be hostile, it would be good to have more men atop the battlements. That way less invaders would flee back north without a few arrows in their backs.

As the host slowly made its way down the muddy road and towards the Swampwatch, the young Captain Amaan wondered to himself what their purpose was. An invasion was unlikely. Perhaps they were bandits or deserters, but then they seemed relatively well equipped, and such lowly wretches would not dare to come within sight of a castle. The more that he thought, the more likely he reasoned that this was some protected convoy, or maybe an important traveler and his bodyguards. That would also be strange; foreigners with any wealth almost always came by ship rather than land, and the garrison was notified ahead of time if the Sultan or Maliks knew anybody of importance was coming through. 

As the Grand Triarchate and his Oathsworn, for those were the travelers, made their way down the causeway to the castle, they would be stopped by the men standing atop the first towers alongside the bridge. From the towers to their left and right and from the castle battlements straight ahead, the Armanians were being stared at by perhaps fifty Azrac guardsmen. Armored with their helmets and chain mail visors hiding even their faces, the guardsmen were sure to let the travelers see that they held bows in their hands, though the archers were not so threatening as to have their arrows nocked.

From the first one of the towers jutting out of the water to the side of the causeway that the Grand Triarchate approached, a guard cried out in the harsh Azrac tongue, "Halt! Move no further before declaring your intentions."

Standing directly ahead of the approaching men, atop the battlements directly above the portcullis, Amaan stood waiting intently to see how these strange people would respond. As the son of a Baig, he had been given a better education than most in his nation. Still, he was not so wealthy and with so much free time that he had been able to study the language of the Armanians or the Arhusians. He knew only a few basic words in those languages, acquired from when he was stationed on the Old Kings' Wall and had to deal with many more foreign merchants than he did here. If the Grand Triarchate and none of his accompanying men spoke Azrac, communication would be difficult. However, they surely would have brought a translator or learned man if they had planned on entering Azraca.

[center][b]TL;DR[/b][/center]

-The fortress of Swampwatch was described.
-Amaan, the captain of the afternoon watch, saw a large host of armored men (The Grand Triarchate and his bodyguards) approaching.
-One of the archers stopped the Grand Triarchate's party as they approached, and demanded to know their purpose.