A knight cannot cope with two widely separated pawns by itself, but with the king nearby it can hold: the knight stops one pawn, the king catches the other.
Separated pawns are the knight's structural weakness: it takes several moves to travel from one side of the board to the other. Here Black has pawns on a5 and h5, and White's king on a1 is close to the a-pawn. The division of labour is therefore clear.