otherwise, why would they even be concerned about how big of a gateway they could make and how long they could hold it? Seriously, all it would take would be for them to make one gateway big enough for one person to duck through to, say, Caemlyn, where there are plenty of Aes Sedai or Asha'man powerful enough to send a bunch back to where Perrin is to create enough gateways for everyone. That takes enough power to make a crouching-sized gateway for 5 seconds. The issue never should have been that they couldn't make a gateway big enough or hold it long enough, more than it should have been that they were too fatigued to do ANYTHING. The other just doesn't make sense.