The walls of the arena were not of a sufficient strength to hold the raging animals contained within at all places. Our captors had probably been counting on the elephants giving their full attention to exterminating the human ants running around in the arena screaming for their lives and not attempt their own escape. They had probably intended on killing the elephants near the end of the act anyway. Briefly I had relayed my plan to the other fighters, who had listened intently scarcely daring to hope for even a chance at attaining their freedom and escaping the grisly death awaiting all of us within the arena.
There weren't as many of us as there had been of the men from Rauin, but that didn't matter as we weren't going to be fighting the beasts. When our dungeon doors had been raised with a resisting creak of the rusty iron draw chains, we had boldly stepped out and gotten the attention of the three elephants. Instead of running aimlessly around the arena away from our superior foe, we charged right at them.
Several of us had fallen in the initial contact with the three crazed lumbering beasts, but those of us who survived quickly started slashing away at the undersides and legs of the great beasts towering above us as we ran past them. This only incited the elephants to an even more insane rage, which is what my plan had needed to happen. As one man, we had broken off from our harassing of the beasts and ran as hard as we could for the far wall of the arena that featured wooden bleachers and pavilions, instead of those made of stone on the fancier end of the arena.
How I made it in one solid piece to the wood boarded wall I don't know. I had felt the hot breath, of one of the elephants pulsing against my back and the swish of its sharpened tusks just behind my legs for what seemed like an eternity, before I reached the far arena wall.
Everything had seemed to be moving in slow motion and then abruptly it had returned to fast paced reality. At the last possible second before we ran headlong into the arena wall, we dove off to the sides of it and hit the dirt as each of us prayed that a heavy foot of one of our pursuers didn't set down on top of us and squash us into the sand.
The three beasts stampeding behind us had no time to veer off after us, but instead they slid onward across the slick wet sandy clay of the arena floor. The shear momentum of their charge and their own bulk sent them plowing through the arena wall with the snapping of breaking boards and beams.