‘Forward! Forward! Forward!’ Felix screamed as loud his as lungs would allow. His battleplate amplified the cry tenfold, feedback pushing it to the edge of incomprehensibility.

A wave of blue, green, gold, red, black and white armoured Space Marines rose up and followed the Tetrarch of Vespastor in a howling line, charging headlong at the Plague Marine position as if the river were not there to stop them. Dozens of Primaris Space Marines in the livery of the Ultramarines were around Felix, many of whom had fought with him at Ardium, including Sergeant Hellicus and Sergeant Tevian. The rest were grizzled veterans from the first Ultima Founding reinforcements sent to Ultramar. Among them stomped Malcades, the first Primaris Space Marine to fall in Ultramar, now bound into the massive shell of a Redemptor Dreadnought. It was a towering thing, heavier by far than the preceding patterns.

Together, the Primaris Space Marines bounded forwards, outpacing their older counterparts and defying the cratered mudscape to close with their enemy.

Flights of dozens of Land Speeders of many Chapters howled overhead. Their gravitic impellers forced steep Vs of liquid earth to spray skywards, interleaving in patterns of brief beauty. Felix felt the push of their engines as they sped on, and filth rained on him after they had passed. Heavy bolters thunked and barked from the Land Speeders’ topsides. As they drew closer to the enemy, these were joined by the whining scream of assault cannon rotary barrels, and the whooshing roar of meltaguns and rockets.

A bunker on the far side of the mud sea exploded in a cloud of green-tinged flame. Small arms fire rose up to meet the Land Speeders and chased them away, breaking their formation apart. They jinked at incredible speed to avoid being downed, but a few were hit. Directly in front of Felix, one suffered a violent explosion that took its left engine away. Smoking debris curled from its rear, and it took a steep dive. One of the two crew leapt to safety; the other went down with his craft. It tore into the sodden earth with a dull crump, sending up a column of black smoke.

‘Forward!’ screamed Felix again. He and his lead phalanx hit the river’s edge. The filth he was wading through rapidly rose up to his armpits. ‘Forward!’

The motive systems of his Aggressor armour pushed him on against the suck of mud. His part of the advance was driving into the worst of it, and the going became hard. It seemed Espandor itself wished to keep him captive and prevent his victory.

‘Forward!’ he cried again.