The man fell back, his howl of rage audible even over the deafening rumble of the diesel engine. Kismet slashed again, a miss, but enough to drive the man back, staggering, his will to fight evidently leaking away along with the blood that seeped from his wound.
Kismet broke off the attack and wheeled around, resuming the pursuit of the lone remaining attacker. There was a flash of light as the cab door ahead was thrown open, and then it was gone as the white-robed figure eclipsed the source. He was there a moment later, but instead of charging in blind he stopped to appraise the situation inside the cab.
The door was still open, and beyond, a shrouded figure brandishing an enormous large bore revolver — possibly a .44 Colt Anaconda or a S&W .500. With a hand cannon like that loose in the cab, he didn’t dare rush the man from behind; a single shot, even a glancing wound to an extremity from one of the Magnum rounds, would be lethal. He didn’t think the gunman planned on killing the train’s engineer, but there was no telling what might happen if he spooked the man.
“Stop the train,” the man ordered, shouting to be heard over the rumble of the diesel. He shook the pistol meaningfully. “Now!”
Then again…thought Kismet, hefting the kukri.
He stepped past the metal threshold and got within an arm’s length of the unsuspecting gunman. Over the man’s shoulder, Kismet saw two men in work clothes — the train’s crew — standing with their hands raised, transfixed by the sight of the enormous gun barrel pointed at them. Kismet’s unexpected appearance was enough to draw the gaze of one man, but probably because he had no idea whether Kismet was friend or foe, his terrified expression did not change. The other man turned to comply with his captor’s orders.
Kismet drew a deep breath into his battered rib cage, and then with as much forcefulness as he could muster, shouted: “Drop the gun!”
The white-robed man started to turn, the reaction automatic, his instinctive curiosity greater than his fear of an unknown threat. Kismet had been expecting exactly this reaction, and as soon as he saw the barrel of the revolver waver a few degrees away from the train crew, he brought the butt end of the kukri’s hilt down squarely on the back of the gunman’s head.
The hilt, two dense pieces of hardwood, riveted through the thick steel tang and capped at one end with an eighth-inch thick layer of metal, slammed into the man’s skull like a hammer, and he crumpled beneath his sheet, deflating to the floor like some kind of fairy tale ghost banished by a happy thought. The heavy Magnum pistol, still clutched in one fist, thumped to the deck without discharging.
Kismet heaved a relieved sigh and lowered the knife. He made eye contact with each of the men in turn, offering a reassuring nod, then opened his eyes to tell them that they were safe, and that they should under no circumstances stop or even slow the train.
But the words never left his mouth. Before he could speak, heavy hands clapped down on either shoulder and yanked him back, through the narrow doorway and once more onto the catwalk where he stumbled uncontrollably toward the rear of the engine. A foot lashed out and swept his legs from under him, depositing him in a painful heap on the metal grill of the ledge. Flat on his back, he looked up into the blank white of his attacker’s disguise. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes through the ragged holes in the sheet, but the bloody horizontal slash across the man’s chest identified him as the man Kismet had earlier struggled with; evidently the man had regained his nerve and wanted back into the fight.
Kismet brought the knife up, and at the same time braced his feet against the walkway, propelling himself backward, away from his foe. The man closed with him, but the distance gave Kismet time to get back to his feet, slashing at the air in front of him to drive the man back. It worked, for a few seconds at least, and then the man reached under his shroud and drew his own blade, a big Bowie knife — easily fifteen inches in length — with brass knuckles on the hilt.
With his nerves already alight from his earlier brush with death, the sight of the heavy blade — a veritable short sword to rival the kukri—didn’t give Kismet the slightest pause. He had survived more than one knife fight in his life — hell, he’d he survived more than one just in the last week — and he doubted very much the redneck under the sheet could make such a boast.
But then something happened that took the fight out of Kismet. At first it was just a strange sensation, like being pushed forward even though no one was behind him. Then he heard the ominous shriek of metal against metal, and knew what was happening.
Up in the cab, the engineer, recognizing that something very bad was about to happen, was doing the one thing Kismet desperately needed him not to do. He was stopping the train.
Kismet launched himself forward, hacking the air in front of him repeatedly and driving his foe back a step before the man even knew what was happening. The man under the sheet was big — football linebacker big — and surprisingly light on his feet, but Kismet could tell by the way he held the Bowie that his first hunch about the man was right; the only thing this man knew about knife fighting was what he saw in movies. He even tried, at one point, to parry Kismet’s blade, like some kind of pirate, fencing with a cutlass. Kismet easily swatted the Bowie down, using the kukri’s forward curve like a hook, and then lashed out with a foot. The kick connected squarely with the man’s gut and sent him reeling backwards where he tripped on the steps and fell halfway through the door to the cab.
Kismet leaped forward intent on shouting for the engineer to keep the train moving forward, but before he could utter even a syllable, a kick from the supine knife-wielder drove him back. The man was back up in an instant, charging forward with the knife out ahead of him like a lance. Kismet twisted to the side and managed to avoid the blade, but the force behind it — the man’s bulky body — slammed into him and both men crashed into the engine hood and tumbled in a tangled mass of limbs and blades on the walkway.
Kismet thought he felt something sharp against his arm — a steel edge cutting through the leather sleeve of his jacket, probably the blade of his own kukri which had been torn from his grasp in the collision — but in the desperate unfocused struggle, the only sensation that meant anything at all to him was the persistent shift of his center of gravity as the train squealed to a stop beneath him.
The hand wielding the Bowie knife suddenly came into view above his head; the man had wrestled his arm free and now had the blade poised right above Kismet’s throat. Both of Kismet’s arms were pinned, immobile beneath the man’s body. All he could do was wrench himself sideways as the knife point came down. Something tugged at his shoulder as the blade ripped through the leather, gouging a shallow furrow in the flesh beneath, but then the blade hit the metal of the walkway and stopped cold. The man had put so much force behind the thrust that the abrupt impact caused the hilt to twist out of his hand. Kismet was only peripherally aware of this fact, but he knew he’d avoided being skewered. Twisting again, he heaved himself and his assailant sideways. As the man resisted, Kismet thrust forward, ramming his forehead into the man’s chin.
The stab of pain that shot through Kismet’s skull was a small price to pay in exchange for the satisfying crunch of his assailant’s lower jaw cracking and probably breaking. But that minor triumph did little to change the situation. Without his knife, the hulking attacker was left with only the weapons nature had given him — his fists, his body mass, his evidently superior strength — and unlike the knife, he was clearly more familiar with how to use those. Agonized and enraged, the man started raining blows in the direction of Kismet’s exposed face. Kismet, his hands still trapped, could do nothing but raise his head, staying as close to the other man as he could in order to limit the effectiveness of the punches.