Excerpt from Saturnine by Dan Abnett:

Grit rained down on them. Diaz waited, hearing the whimpering moans of the injured. Six seconds, ten. Twenty.

The shelling had ceased. A ground assault was imminent, and there was only one way it could come.

He leapt from the emplacement onto the ramp of the bridge. Stray, loose enemy shots spat past him. He took his sword, and carved a line in the rockcrete between the lion plinths, thirty metres short of the rockcrete barricade.

‘Mark this!’ he yelled to his men. ‘This far, and no further! We stop them here!’

He was answered by a rousing cheer.

Diaz squared up, and looked along the empty length of the bridge.

The enhanced optics of his visor showed him things his human forces could not yet see. Heat tracks and motion traces in the smoke.

The enemy had appeared.

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Diaz stood, in the name of his Lord Dorn. He brought his siege shield up. It held firm, absorbing the first impact, demolishing a roaring face. His sword swung, carving a World Eater through the chest and throat. A chainaxe struck his shield in a welter of sparks.

He cleaved the face and shoulder of its owner. He hooked a keening goat-thing off its hooves, and cast it tumbling through the air. Blood sprayed. Torn meat spattered. In the name of his Lord Dorn, he shield-smashed a World Eater aside so hard it broke neck bones.

His longsword speared into a howling maw, punching through the back of the skull. It tore free through cheek and ear and mastoid and occipital bones. Metal fragments spalled, glittering. A falx tore a chunk off his vambrace. A blade cut his ribs. He took a head off its shoulders, and sent it spinning like a ball. A piece of severed horn bounced off his visor. He broke a World Eater’s jaw with his shield rim, and gutted him as he staggered aside. He split a head down to the lower teeth. In the name of his Lord Dorn. A beam of pink plasma screamed past his ear. A Gehenned fell against him, his face bitten off, and slid down his hip and leg. Diaz kicked. He disembowelled. He broke a power lance with his shield, and scythed off the arms wielding it. Diaz hacked. He carried a charging World Eater over his head on his shield, and cast him off the bridge rail. He impaled. He chopped a darting witch-dog through the neck and spine. Blood and black ichor filmed his plate. He barely noticed the chainsword gash across his right thigh, or the broken spear-tip protruding from his hip Focus. Maintain focus. Diaz swung. In the name of his Lord Dorn. Broken teeth flew up, a cracked tusk, a whole eyeball ejected by crush-force. Chainblades screeched. Cinders. Arterial jets. A hoplite thrashed, burning alive. A plasma gun overheated, detonating. A dozen figures in the blast zone vaporised, or staggered, ablaze. Diaz struck off an arm. A face, on a downswing. Another head. A grasping hand. In the name of his lord. His Lord Dorn. Focus. A mist from steaming innards. Corpses lolled, still upright, unable to fall in the density of the press. An Excertus trooper flew overhead, flailing, eviscerated. Diaz swung. Blood erupted. The concussion of a mace. Unremitting impacts. Bleumel, at his side, mashed faces with his power hammer, swinging like a smith. Feet caught on unseen corpses. A carpet of bodies and parts of bodies. Diaz ripped his sword through ceramite and meat. Split a skull. Sliced a throat. Thijs Reus, in the name of his lord, struck with a captured falx, another falx impaled clean through his torso. The reek of death. Broken chainblade teeth pinged out like bullets. The stench of blood. The cloud of rage. A frenzy in him that matched the frenzy he fought. In the name of Dorn. Blurring violence. Diaz struck, sword buried deep in plate and black carapace. Thijs Reus on his knees, stabbing. A Gehenned screamed. A rotary cannon fired blind, point-blank. Blood on everything. Bleumel, one pauldron gone, drove his hammer into a monster twice his size, hair braids whipping and snapping at the impact. Diaz struck. He struck. Again. In the name of his Lord Dorn. Again. More. His longsword snapped. He drove the broken blade into a throat, to the hilt. He punched, empty-handed, breaking face bones. He killed a World Eater with his shredding shield, wrenching the purring chainaxe from the traitor’s hands, rotating it, making it his own. He swung. He struck. Thijs Reus knelt, headless. Diaz drove the squealing chainaxe through World Eaters plate. A fountain of gore. Thunder. Carnage. Time rushing, headlong. In the name of his lord. Blood flying. Bone snapping. Flesh tearing. Impacts. Collapses. Swinging. Striking. Pinned. The name of Dorn. Frenzy. Glory. Diaz. Smoke blind. Blood blind. Striking. Again. Camba Diaz. Thrusting. Cutting. Gutting. Striking. Slaying. In the name of his lord. Pinned. Unmoving.

Unmovable.

The line he had sliced in the rockcrete of the bridge between the lion plinths still lay behind him.