THEY found some of the constructs almost immediately, in a field where only the ditches and gullies that were too straight for nature told that a battle had ever taken place.

Miro felt his hope fade as he looked at the huge mound of charred limbs. A pile of woodmen had been thrown here and burned. Of course the enemy wouldn't be foolish enough to leave them lying around.

A cluster of bonemen had been deliberately splintered and thrown onto the pile. Miro turned to the moustached Halrana animator, expecting to see the man in tears. Instead the animator looked at the small tablet he held in his hands, where some symbols were flashing and fading.

"Ironmen," the animator said. "They're close." He began to search the area.

"Stop," the Alturan captain said, waving his men back. The animator halted in his tracks. The captain walked forward, prodding the ground in front of the brown-robed Halrana with his sword.

Where the animator was about to step, the ground fell away under the captain's probing, to reveal a deep ditch lined with spikes.

The animator turned white-faced to the Alturan captain.

"It's treacherous around here," the captain said. "Fan out!" he called to his men. "Look for ditches and traps. The animators need to search this area, and they need to do it fast. Look out for your skins, but mark out the safe ground."

The fifty men dispersed, probing at the ground with their swords and calling out when they found a trap. Miro cursed the delay, while the Halrana animators conferred among themselves, gesturing to the flashing symbols on their controller tablets.

Miro wondered how long before the enemy reached this area and they were forced to pull back to Marshal Beorn's hastily-crafted defences. Miro had been counting on the support of the constructs they had left behind last winter, and now realised how precarious the situation was.

"I'm going to see how far away the enemy are, how much time we have," Miro told the captain.

"You can't go out there," the captain began, "let me send…"

Miro spoke some words, and his armoursilk blazed as he activated its core protection. "I'm the best-placed to find out," Miro said. "I'll be back."

He chanted as he ran, calling forth the multitude of sequences that would protect him in the event of a fall. Would the armoursilk be powerful enough to save his skin if he fell into a spiked trap? He hoped he wouldn't find out.

Miro opened his stride, running with long steps, barely touching the ground with his toes, expecting at any instant to plummet down into the earth. He thanked the Lord of the Sky as he reached higher ground where there would be no traps, climbing a hill where he had a vantage over the area.