Then the enemy were upon them, and Gdolkin knew them by the abysmal stench they exuded, if nothing else.

The heretics dropped on the Space Marines in a tide of pestilential martyrdom. They cared not that they died almost instantly at the gauntlets of the Iron Hands, their minds twisted by the foul contagions they had gladly welcomed into their bodies - the gifts of a benevolent, pestilential deity. They cared only that they played their part to hinder those they saw to be servants of a false emperor and allow their masters to fulfil their corrupted plans.

The Iron Hands cut through the diseased bodies of traitor Guardsmen, robed cultists and deformed mutants, spraying the trench with a lethal concoction of grey brain matter, blood and bacteria-bloated viscera.

They were the lost and the damned now, but they cared not. They lived - if it could be called that, considering the suffering their bodies had willingly undergone - only to die for Father Nurgle. And they had served the purpose other malign intelligences had determined for them. As Gdolkin cut down a pincer-armed ape creature, he saw the three-eyed visor of one of Nurgle's own Death Guard appear through the green-grey mist at the same moment as the Plague Marine raised an acid-dripping blade above its head.

Gdolkin's power axe met the corrupted plague sword in mid-air with a crackle of discharging energy and a burst of sparks. A drop of the viscous venom splattered Gdolkin's armour. He was aware of a bubbling hiss as it ate a small crater through the paint into the bonded ceramite beneath.

The Iron-Father swung his axe free and, seizing the initiative, swung in low at the Plague Marine's legs. If the force blade connected with the rusted greaves it would slice through them like a laser through mercury.

Despite the Plague Marine's bloated appearance, suggesting that its movements might be slower than those of the tech-enhanced Iron Hand, the Nurglite brought its blade down to block Gdolkin's strike. The Iron-Father raised his boltgun in his left hand and, taking a step forward, rammed it into the topmost of the three eye-lenses, cracking the grimy, green tinted glass as he did so. He pulled the trigger. Several rounds of destructive shells blasted into the horned helm of the Plague Marine, exploding out of the back of it in a welter of cauterised brain matter and bone fragments. The corrupted creature's body spasmed briefly and then collapsed onto the ground, folding in on itself.

The Iron Hands engaged the Death Guard in a storm of bolter fire and brute strength. Hurling aside the last of their mutated attackers, they crashed into the Plague Marines' line as the thrice-cursed horrors continued to advance towards them from the other end of the trench.

The trench was wide enough at this point for four Marines to engage the enemy. Sergeant Erastus had forced his way up next to the Iron-Father, throwing devastating plasma fire into the packed squad of plague troops. So here they were, fighting shoulder to shoulder again, with Gdolkin's gun-servitors laying down such a storm of suppressing fire from behind them that the corrupted Nurgle-creatures must have felt that their Daemon-Primarch Mortarion had abandoned them.