~~~~
"Damnation!"
The shouts of the crowd ringing in his ears, the referee's toll of a count already beginning, Perry charged forward, both he and Woodford frantically trying to lift Campbell off of Gareth's still body.
"Four ... five ... six ..."
"He's not getting up. Call off the fight," growled Woodford.
"Sod off!"
"Seven ... eight ... nine ..."
Perry desperately tried to rouse his friend. He slapped his cheek and shook him and leaned down and shouted in his ear. Nothing.
"Eleven ... twelve ... thirteen ..."
He couldn't hear with the rising roar around him, couldn't think with the panic that was making his heart race, didn't know whether to call off the fight or what. Again, he slapped Gareth's cheeks, but there was no response, not even a groan of pain, and beneath still, half-closed lashes, Perry could see the milky crescent of his friend's eyes, rolled back in his head and seeing nothing.
He looked up, saw the Den members gesturing and waving, and there, off above a sea of heads, the Duke of Blackheath coming forward, the crowd parting before Armageddon like waves before a ship.
"Seventeen ... eighteen ... nineteen ..."
"Damn you, Gareth, wake up!
The Butcher, bleeding heavily, was strutting around his fallen rival in amusement and high contempt, holding his arms over his head in a victory salute, shouting. The Den members were all yelling at the top of their lungs, the duke was still coming, and Perry, desperate, bent down, bodily picked up Gareth and threw him over his shoulder, and, staggering beneath his weight, rushed him back to their corner, rudely dumping him on the cold stone and ripping the bottle of ale from Chilcot's stunned hand. He poured it straight over Gareth's face —
"Twenty-two ... twenty-three ... twenty-four ..."
— and was rewarded with a sudden flutter of his friend's lashes, a sharp, spastic jerk of his head, and a groan of pain. Dizzily, Gareth tried to raise himself, only to sway and fall back against Perry's arm with a sigh.
"Twenty-five ... twenty-six ... twenty-seven ..."
Three seconds left. Cursing, Perry grabbed Gareth's injured arm and twisted it right back, and his friend lunged to his feet with an inhuman howl of pain, lashing out with a fist that nearly took off the top of Perry's blond head. But he was up, if dazedly awake, and Perry wasted no time rushing him back to the line and shoving him at the Butcher once more.
Gareth, reeling and all at sea, saw only a blurry vortex of faces spinning around him. He saw Campbell's bloody visage moving in and out of his vision, heard the crowd shouting at him to pull himself together, felt only pain ... throbbing viciously in his arm, his bruised ribs, pulsing in the back of a skull that felt as if it had been mashed like a potato. And now Campbell was hitting him again, hard, but the pain seemed to come from far away, and Gareth had little interest in defending himself, only standing there, swaying on his feet, blinking dumbly with each blow. From some distant part of his brain that was still functioning, he found himself hoping that Juliet wasn't here to see this ... that she would never hear about it ... that the Butcher would just hurry up and put him to sleep because he could feel stone beneath his knees now, and Campbell was still hitting him, and Perry was yelling "Foul!" and Lucien — 'Sdeath, was that Lucien? — was bellowing in a voice that could've shaken the very heavens:
"Perry! Stop the goddamned fight! Stop it this instant or by God, I'll haul you straight to the gallows for manslaughter!"
"No!" Gareth cried, shaking his head, and then pandemonium broke loose as Lucien spurred Armageddon right up the shallow stairs onto the stage, the crowd shouting and roaring behind him. The referees were yelling. Snelling was hollering. The crowd swelled in a mighty human tide toward the ropes, Campbell came charging down on Gareth like a lion on a kill, and Gareth knew then that if he didn't do something, he was going to die.
Lunging to his feet, he braced himself, took a deep breath, and stopped the Butcher with a single blow between the eyes. Campbell dropped like a stone. The crowd went insane. And Gareth staggered away, reeling off the ropes and mustering all his strength in a desperate bid to stay on his feet as the referee began the slow count for his opponent ...
"Twenty-eight ... twenty-nine ... thirty." He grabbed Gareth's bleeding fist and thrust it high. "The winner!"
And then the screaming throngs were rushing the stage, the Den members were vaulting in over the ropes, and Lucien, his face thunderous, was heading straight to where Gareth, sporting a silly little grin, stood swaying dizzily.
"Guess what, Luce ... I'm a landowner now!"
He blinked as a slight form brushed past his brother and came running across the stage, skirts flying, tears streaming down her face.
"Juliet?" he managed, in stunned disbelief.
And as Gareth's tenuous hold on consciousness finally broke, it was she who caught him and, holding him until Lucien could pick him up and lift him over his shoulder, silently followed the brothers back across the stage to where Armageddon waited — leaving Sir Roger Foxcote, and the constable, to approach a suddenly quaking Snelling.
"You, my man, are under arrest."