To these Masouda pointed, saying that their road ran between them, and that beyond lay the valley of the Orontes.
While she spoke, far behind them they heard the sound of men shouting, although they could see nothing because of the dense mist.
"Push on," said Masouda; "there is no time to spare," and they went forward, but only at a hand gallop, for the ground was still rough and the light uncertain.
When they had covered some six miles of the distance between them and the mountain pass, the sun rose suddenly and sucked up the mist.

This was what they saw.

Before them lay a flat, sandy plain; behind, the stony ground that they had traversed, and riding over it, two miles from them, some twenty men of the Assassins.
"They cannot catch us," said Wulf; but Masouda pointed to the right, where the mist still hung, and said: "Yonder I see spears." Presently it thinned, and there a league away they saw a great body of mounted soldiers--perhaps there were four hundred.
"Look," she said; "they have come round during the night, as I feared they would.

Now we must cross the path before them or be taken," and she struck her horse fiercely with a stick she had cut at the stream.

Half a mile further on a shout from the great body of men to their right, which was answered by another shout from those behind, told them that they were seen.
"On!" said Masouda.