"I can have some one else's tent," she exclaimed crossly. "No one else _has_ a tent," he said with the same dry smile. She turned from him petulantly. "You can leave them all behind if you like; I don't care!" Yet she repacked submissively--with the help of the khansamah, whom Terrington sent to the assistance of her pride--what she most needed in the space allowed her; with a new dull kindling of anger against the man who could compel her so easily to obey. But the eager preparations in the darkness subdued her with the sense of an impending fate, the silent streaming forth of the little force into the night towards the day of battle and the awful snows, and she was gratefully reassured when Terrington suddenly appeared beside her as the doolie drew up, and helped her in with a comforting pressure of the hand. "Sleep if you can," he said; "we're perfectly safe for the next twelve hours." His own beloved Guides brought up the rear, and he rode last with them out of the Fort. For the next day and night danger only could threaten from direct pursuit, and so his place was for the present with the rear-guard. VIII The position in which Terrington found himself requires to be explained. Determined to clear out of Sar, three ways lay before him. The valley of the Kotli to the south, through the Gate of the Great Evil, by which, with Sir Colvin Aire, he had come up from Sampur; the Darai Pass, due east across the Kalawari, and then south-east into the Punjab; and the Palári, north-east, through the wild welter of ranges under the roof of the world and over plains of snow to the western border of Cashmir. The first, though physically far the easiest, was out of the question, since the road would be lined with hostile khels who could force him to fight every mile of the way, with the odds of the ground and numbers always against him. The Darai, which came next in feasibility, was approached over an open and exposed country, and was commanded from above in its most dangerous defiles. Consequently it was by the Palári, the most arduous of all the roads between Sar and Hindustan, that Terrington determined to retire. To Rashát, which Gale was holding at the foot of the Palári, there were two roads from Sar. One, the longer, which Terrington had taken, led up the left bank of the river through gorges of increasing grandeur till the Sorágh Gul was reached. There the shorter road from Sar joined it, and the two rose together to the snows. Terrington was forced to go the longer way because he could cover his retreat along it with a small rear-guard, and because the shorter passed through Sar itself and beside the very gates of the Palace; but he had to face the certainty of finding Mir Khan and his men at Sorágh Gul in a position almost impregnable barring his advance upon Rashát. There, if wedged between the force in front of him and that following him from Sar, he would be forced to starve or to surrender.