CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
Darius lay on his back and looked up and watched one of those creatures raise its ax high overhead and bring it down right for his face. His world moved in slow motion: he felt every breeze, saw the frozen face of the beast, heard the distant cheers of the crowd. This was what it felt like, he realized, to live his last breath.
Darius wanted to react in time, to roll out of the way or block the blow—yet he knew he could not. His sword lay two feet away, and this time the creature had come down too fast for him to react in time. Out of the corner of his eye Darius saw his fellow gladiators, all dead on the ground, and he knew that his time, too, had come. Here he would meet his end, on this dusty floor, in this hated arena, with all these gladiators whom he did not kno
