While the Warhawks of the IX Legion launched strafing runs against the manufactoria, cutting into the hordes as they emerged from the gaping doorways, and Khalybus led his Iron Hands against the daemons emerging from the foundry closest to the primary manufactorum, Guilliman struck from three centres. After being part of the vanguard in the initial run to the great forge, the Destroyers turned back, driving a wedge through the centre of the mass of daemons at the same time as Guilliman took Flame of Illyrium and the Invictus Bodyguard in a stiletto-jab through the body of daemons besieging the Dark Angels. Towards the middle of the battlefield and at the southern end, the greater body of the Ultramarines attacked in two radiating movements. Phalanxes cut into the enemy like so many swords. Guilliman forced the daemons to contend with multiple fronts and kept them on the defensive. They sought to repel the invaders and take back the land. The Ultramarines had no positions to hold. All they needed to do was keep moving, and destroy everything in their paths.

The Destroyers threw themselves into the fight with an enthusiasm that might have troubled Guilliman in a different context. When he monitored the communications between Hierax and his company, he heard tones verging on savage joy. Yet the discipline of their attacks never wavered. What he heard was the brutal satisfaction of no longer fighting a defensive war. He understood. When he pumped the Arbitrator’s double stream of bolter shells into the abominations, when the explosions vaporised warp flesh, he felt the same satisfaction. And when the Destroyers pulverised the heaving mass of the enemy with rad artillery barrages, there was more satisfaction. The worst of weapons for the worst of foes. That logic was unassailable.

Then use the weapons you have acquired. You know what the athames can do to these beings.

He brushed the thought aside. The daggers were in the vault aboard the Samothrace, beyond the reach of temptation. There was no need of them here. The weaponry of the Ultramarines was effective in destroying the abominations.

Then Gorod, marching with Guilliman beside the Flame of ­Illyrium, challenged his certainty. ‘Chainswords and axes are felling these things more readily than bolters,’ he said.

‘We’ve seen this before,’ Guilliman answered. ‘But they are falling quickly enough.’

‘I could almost wish we had brought even more primitive weapons.’

Guilliman didn’t answer. He punched the Gladius Incandor through the skull of a glistening pink monster, then finished it with two more stabs as it tried to divide itself.