The documentation says that when running in command line mode, the default is 0 (unlimited). It doesn’t say that you cannot override it:
set_time_limit(10); // this way
ini_set('max_execution_time', 10); // or this way
Edit: I just tried it myself, and it works as expected.
F:\dev\www>c:php -f index.php
PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 2 seconds exceeded in F:\dev\www\index.php on line 3
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 2 seconds exceeded in F:\dev\www\index.php on line 3