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Darl pauses a moment.

"These two men abandoned two women, there wagon, and their kids in the wilderness two nights ago, stealing off in the middle of the night and leaving them completely unprotected. One of the children is critically ill, and the vial they were using to treat the sickness disappeared with the men. I've been asked to try and get it back, and return it to them before it's too late."

Darl looks over the Apok's shoulder at the approaching guards. "As for help, if there was some way of preventing the local muscle from interfering, and easing their minds regarding my intentions, that would probably go a long way."

"The plot thickens," The Apok states. "No wonder they shows so much fear when they found out what I was."

The Apok shakes her head as if she's about to do something that she would rather not and then she pulls her mask off, revealing an incredibly beautiful face, pale with grey eyes with a hint of blue, "Maybe I can, although it is not a tactic I like using any more."

Before turning towards the guards, she states, "Jonesey, I will still help you if I can, but lives have to come first." At the same moment, she pulls her cloak off, wrapping it around the mask and revealing her figure.

"Many thanks," Darl acknowledges. "I'd be happy to explain more in detail later ..." he adds, not quite knowing when later might be. Then, realizing he also needs a 'where', he adds, "perhaps at Dan's inn, if the locals let me in," before turning away.

Striding away from the town, he makes a note of how far away Dan might be, and confirms that the armoured giant is still headed away from town rather than looking back in Darl's direction. 'Don't want to tip them off yet,' he thinks to himself, confident that as long as it looks like he's simply headed out of town with the other travellers, he'll be able to catch up to them without them realizing that "they" are, in fact, his destination. Occasionally looking over in their direction, he continues at a quickened pace ... all the while scanning for the two individuals matching the descriptions he was given the previous day; and presumably travelling with Dan if the Apok was correct.

- Jeremy/Darl

The Apok lets Darl go to his task without further comment. Darl looks off in the distance and sees the retreating form of Dan among a throng of travelers heading in that same general direction. Darl is about ten minutes behind Dan now--just under a mile--so even with his eyesight it is difficult to determine if John and Harvey are in the crowd of people around Dan.

As Darl hastens on in that direction, the travelers in front and around him begin to thin as people turn from the main road to go about there business elsewhere. In the couple of minutes of walking so far, he doesn't appear to have gained very much ground on them. With Dan's extremely long stride, the two men with him would have to be walking very rapidly to keep up.

"Curses," Darl mutters under his breath, recognizing that he's not catching up. With the crowd thinning out, it would be much more difficult to sneak up on his quarry undetected.

With that in mind, Darl changes tactics slightly, and breaks out into a fast jog ... not so much as to exhaust himself, but enough to try and close some of the distance between himself and Dan.

Darl's rapid pace is making up time rapidly. He soon finds that he can make out two figures walking with Dan that match the descriptions of John and Harvey...all the way down to the taller of the two walking with a staff. It's too far, yet, to be certain if the staff matches the description of the one stolen from the church. They don't seem to have noticed Darl tailing them, or if they did they didn't think anything of it. He's going to be soon close enough to need to determine how he's going to approach them.

OOC: I'm on vacation this week, so I may be a little slow posting. I'll try to stay on it, though.

Darl continues at a jog for a little longer, wanting to get close enough to determine which of the two (if either) is wearing the backpack the women mentioned a day earlier. Slowing back down to a walk, he studies the backpack itself, checking to see how well it is mounted; and whether cutting through the shoulder straps would be sufficient to remove it from the man's back. He also looks for any telltale bulges that might be the "something round" that the woman said was in John's pack.

Reaching down inside his cloak, he loosens the strap on his blade's holster, and slides the knife up his cloak sleeve; concealing it from view but making it available in case he needs it.

"Get close, time-slip in, cut the pack loose, and disappear," he thinks to himself, a slight grin appearing on his face as he envisions how he wants the next few minutes to unfold.