Soldiers.
An Imperial fist short.
Sgt Buller Craned his head to the left to regard his contemporaries. The Fire Angels Chaplain was pacing up and down the trench behind his brethren, screaming battle prayers over the din of constant artillery bombardment. Head above the parapet, the Skull-helmed warrior strode back and forth, heedless of the danger of enemy snipers, or pieces of shrapnel from the friendly artillery that would sever his head in an instant.
Idiot.
Buller turned back to his front and fixed his good eye on the lip of the trench above him, focussing on the line of contrast between muddied steel and fitful sky.
He and his brothers knelt in their mustard yellow war plate in silent contemplation, each man steeling themselves for the next charge.
The time for prayer was done. The very nature of the Fire Angels benedictions irked him, reeking of ecclesiarchal zealotry.
But it was not his place to speak out, his duty and that of his brothers was to kill the enemy, nothing more.
The inter-chapter relations had started cold and grown icy. At first the Fire Angels had sought to impress their senior cousins with public displays of devotion and piety.
This had invariably failed. At command level the communications were clipped, minimal. At squad level, they were non-existent. Sgt Buller had overheard the Fire Angels referring to he and his brethren as "Arrogant men of Stone."
They quietly questioned if the Fist's heart was in the fight.
Let them think what they want, Buller cared not as long as they did their duty.
The questions had stopped after the first day, when the yellow armoured brothers led the charge across no-man's land.
Following in the heels of a relentless bombardment they ran at full sprint. Gleaming armour was quickly stained by mud and worse, dispatching the image of aloofness as quickly as they dispatched their foes.
In the tight confines of the trenches his brethren excelled. The brutal melee of point blank bolter fire, of dragging traitors into the dirt with a knife in their guts as your own brothers trample over you to keep up momentum.
This was the manner in which the fists waged war.
Simple, precise, effective.
Heavy rain hammered against his armour, cleansing it of some of the months of accumulated grime that encrusted its surface. A single drop hit his forehead, following the trail of the vertical scar that bisected where his left eye used to be. The droplet found a miniscule gap between flesh and the crudely stapled plasteel plate that covered the wound and infiltrated the empty socket.
Buller shook his head at the irritation, scattering drops that had settled on his greying, tightly cropped hair. Every man in his squad wore his hair the same way, having received the style as young aspirants and seeing no reason to change it.
It looked efficient. It suited them.
Buller had lost the eye on the 3rd day of the 2nd week. A piece of shrapnel had smashed into his helm, bringing forth a recalled an image of a squashed grape as his eye audibly popped under the barrage and he lost the sensory organ forever.
The image of the grape was not his own memory he knew, but one of a heretic's flesh he had consumed years before to learn the whereabouts of treacherous kin.
Once an invaluable tool, the eye was now an empty socket and merely representing a weak portal to the brain, so he armoured it the best he could.
Sgt Buller had affected similar repairs to his helmet, the familiar red and white visage marred by a dull grey plate covering the shattered eyepiece, the remaining lens staring into the mud as it hung from his belt.
Explosions boomed, sounds overlapping without rhythm, dangerously close, and Buller stared.
Somewhere out there, unseen, were renegade Space Marines.
And they would be killed.
He thumbed the scrimshawed fingers secured to his waist with an absent mind, the armoured metallic fingers of his augmetic right arm whirring softly with the motion.
Having lost the arm years before to a tyranid warrior attack, his superhuman faculties were overcome by a powerful toxin that prevented blood clotting. He was technically dead for 3 minutes before the apothecaries brought him back with lifesaving transfusions.
Fitting within accepted parameters for chapter rituals, the young Brother Buller scrimshawed his own hand bones and kept them on his person ever since.
It was the closest thing to humour his squad mates had experienced. The pain glove kept him longer than usual that day.
Silence.
The barrage had stopped. At this unspoken command, Squad Buller unclipped their helmets as one and locked them in place.
The Fire Angels Chaplain was still shouting.
Sgt Buller checked his bolter and thumbed the activation rune, the chainsaw bayonet coughing into life at his touch.
A voice boomed over the vox-net, drowning out the Fire Angel's prayer in the confines of the fist's helmets.
The voice belonged to Galbracht, the Imperial Fists own company chaplain, his throaty growl unmistakable even when distorted by vox static.
'Primarch-Progenitor, to your glory and the glory of him on earth!'
The men of the 4th company replied as one
'FOR TERRA!'
and hauled their battered yellow forms over the trench, into the enemy's guns.