The battle cries and war hymns of the assembled brothers became grunts of effort. Bolt-rounds slapped into the thick morass. Only when the bolts reached deep into the mud did their mass fuses trip. The morass blunted their power, and the muted shock waves of their explosions quivered the mud. Huge shells lobbed by the Death Guard’s siege tanks fell, their watery explosions welling up bubbles and decayed body parts from the riverbed.

Across a battlefront almost ten kilometres long and in the face of heavy fire, five and a half thousand Space Marines struggled on.

In answer to the firing of the Death Guard, a suppressive bombardment set up from behind Imperial lines. Whirlwind rockets shrieked, heaving up domes of soil from the Plague Marines’ trench line. The enemy’s fire cut out temporarily from one quarter or another, but the trench systems snaked back far towards Espandoria Tertio, and the enemy were quick in bringing up their reserves.

The ground was a sucking sea. The sky was a messy exchange of heavy fire. Warriors died, obliterated by direct hits. A Space Marine, his livery obscured, sank below the surface and came bursting out again a score of metres away. Felix’s footing became unsure as currents tugged at his legs. The flow rapidly became irresistible and dragged the assault out of line. Felix’s high-level tactical datascreeds showed his formation becoming hopelessly dispersed.

‘Press on!’ he said. ‘Converge on my position when you can!’

To his left, Malcades forged through the currents unimpeded. He was singled out by the Death Guard, and a blaze of anti-tank fire came his way. Shells deflected from his sloping glacis and lascannons burned molten holes in his armour, but he could not be stopped.

There was no logic to the river flow; it looped back and tugged hard in unnatural eddies, spinning men about and dragging them under. The Space Marines pressed on against the river’s hindrance, foot by torturous foot, their squads mingling and separating, but always going forwards.

Felix approached the shore. Mounded banks of earth fronted the river. Filth-encrusted helmets stuck up from behind the enemy’s firing positions, many bearing single spikes. A plasma stream scorched the mud ten metres to his right, bringing up a wall of steam. A second shot decapitated the Primaris Intercessor slogging along nearest Felix: Brother Cleus, a member of the Second Company of the Ultramarines. His colours were obscured. Drab brown briefly become arterial red, and he sank from sight into the filth, his gene-seed lost.