After a look at the completely decimated remains of his crossbow, the Handyman brought it down upon the still twitching remains of a giant spider. In its final motion, the beast's leg twitched as if trying to grab him, but it was just agony.
Malcolm looked at his hands. Like after any battle, they looked, and in fact were, just two hand-shaped bruises. He had grown accustomed to that slight pain, anything can become a habit.
Malcolm stepped out of the wreck of the wagon, the only one in their little caravan, which had served as the place for this last struggle, and began looking for their employer. Finding him wasn't hard, he was sprawled nearby. However, if he wouldn't be wearing that trademark ridiculous robe with a canvasplant best underneath, it would probably not be possible to indentify the corpse.
With a grim expression on his face, which looked bruised as well, he cast this gaze around. The merchant was dead. The horse was dead. The wagon was crushed. One of the other two guards was dead. That man had been paranoid enough to employ three guards, but too greedy to go with a real caravan, and look what it got them all into.
After noting the destruction, Malcolm continued looking around. There were four men, and only two corpses. He also remembered hearing fighting somewhere nearby while he was fighting off that last ant, so maybe the big idiot was still alive.

The sight of the crushed ants before his feet gave him an euphoric feeling; nothing could stop him. Arf pulled his club out of the head of the poor ant.
“I’ll need to clean that later, always such a mess.” Said he silent, not being able to think clearly without speaking the words. He looked around, he didn’t like ants; always coming in packs without stopping their attacks.
He was in the middle of nowhere. The car or horse didn’t offer that much possibility for transport. The heat was terrible, he could almost feel his brains cooking in the helmet. His shirt waved in the little breeze, a luxurious offer from the harsh climate.
He slightly remembered that there were four persons… “The client, two guys with weapons and another one… Maybe I should search for one of them, I’m charged to protect them, can’t let it happen that one of them dies.”
He looked around and heard the heavy breathing of an other person, he walked to it, hoping that things would clear up.

Malcolm's gaze shifted towards the large man that would become his companion. Why was it this one that survived? he thought, looking at the man's brutish, and not particularly intelligent appearance. Before beginning to talk, the handyman moved the tips of his fingers over his shiningly wet forehead, and then shook a few drops of sweat from them.
He hadn't thought his movement trough: the sudden shake caused a surge in the slight pain of his hand, which caused him to frown for an instant. "These two are dead." the Handyman stated. "So it's us and..." he paused, thinking, "And four days of dust and desert to get to Compendium. If we're not lucky, five. I seem to recall we had enough provision to last four men three days, so that's six rations a day for each of us." He continued thinking out loud, turning around and paying barely any attention to Arf. "Plus these ants... I wonder if I can do something with the carapaces..."
The Handyman wandered around the wreckage, looking at the litter and the wreckage, and waited for that spark of creativity. "Hey, you!" he called at Arf. "Arf, was it?" The name caused a slight smirk to appear on his face. "What do you think?"
If you think, that is. he added in his head.

"You can eat ants? They don't look tasty, I prefer fish." Arf stepped closer, the other man gave him the secure feeling of not being alone.
"And four days walking in this heat? Can't we take a shortcut, or go with another caravan? Safer and faster." Arf was proud of his idea, the other man wouldn't have thought about that. He walked to the man to observe him better. There was something very quire about his skin. He stepped closer and closer and viewed rather strange lines on the face of the man.
He softley hit the man on the back, "now it's me and you for five days, lets make the best of it! Lets start with your name."

"I'm Mal. Mr. Harm to some." The Handyman turned around, and looked at the remains. "Some call me the Handyman. And you can't be picky in the wastelands." Mal walked over to the corpse, and touched it with the tip of his boot. "Our friend here thought it was a good idea to travel on his own. And that means we won't see another caravan for days, maybe weeks." A sad smile crossed his features. He kneeled down next to the remains of the wagon and tearing the fabric. An ant's jaw, brutally broken off, served as a knife. "We'll need a transportable perimeter of traps to set up at night. I'll need a weapon." Then, Malcolm turned around and stared at the other guard with a smirk. "You'll be the one transporting, by the way."
He had recognized the man long ago. This guy had stolen a few of his most profitable clients, who chose brawn over exposed veins. The Handyman barely blamed them. He chose to blame him.

Still digesting all the information Mal gave him, he fired another question: " What is 'a transportable perimeter of traps? Do you mean that you need me to guard the camp at night?"
Arf bowed and looked to the nearest ant closely. Fascinating. Suddenly the ant convulsed, a last sign of life besides them in this godforsaken land. He jumped backwards, fell on the ground, took his club and kept beating the ant, until there was nothing left but pulp.

"You forgot this one Harmy, he almost killed me." He took a deep breath and set his mind to the task at hand.
"How are we going to lit a fire tonight?"

"You just destroyed a perfectly good," although disgusting, Mal added in another mental addition to his speech, "and perfectly dead meal. Never heard of convulsions?"
The frustration slowly subsided, and in a less sarcastic and acidic tone, he continued, "I mean that at nightfall, we will set out traps around where we sleep. For that, we need traps we can move." His tone changed to the one one would use to adress a small and not particularly bright child. "We won't be making fire. Two people can't afford to-" he stopped speaking as the jaw's sharpness proved too much for one of the tougher fibers of the fabric and his makeshift knife shot trough the fabric, barely missing his fingers. "Like I was saying," he repeated, "Two people can't afford to be noted in the wastelands."

A breeze picked up that lifted the soft sand into the air and carried it on the wind. It was not unpleasant, but it was getting stronger, and soon the visibility would drop. While it didn't look like an ion storm approaching, the two survivors would need to get to cover before sunset.

Sandstorms were both a blessing and a curse, since wild creatures usually stayed in shelters, so they didn't pose much of a threat, but they easily stopped entire caravans in their tracks, forcing them to seek cover and reinforce their carts.

However, fortunately, most sand storms were over in an hour or two and most weren't very severe.

The large man closed his eyes, "do you feel that too? Atlast a proper wind instead of those minor breezes, delighting." Ignorant of the fact that there was a possible murdereous sand storm coming up, Arf sat down on the foreside of the car and stretched his back.
"Maybe we should camp here? We have a car, easy for shelter against the 'things" Arf shivered heavily when he spoke those words out, everything in the wastelands was abolutely gigantic, never something cuddley or fluffy.
"And no fire? Or any light? Are you out of your mind!? Or worse, no mind." the man smirked about the simple but pathetic joke he made. "Scared of the beasties? Just shoot them when they come close: light for me; food for you. Speaking about food, I'm starving, got any fruit in that bag?"

"Obviously, you've never heard of Shadowclaws." Malcolm stated calmly. He ignored the large man's words, just waved his hands around and ordered him, "Grab anything you can carry. Especially sharp, resi..." Malcolm turned his eyes towards Arf and eyed him with doubt, chose a simpler word. "...springy, or edible. Weapons are welcome as well. We need shelter."
The wind was pleasant, but it would soon become deadly, and the Handyman did not plan on staying until that moment. People sometimes refuse to just sit and willingly wait for death to come get them.

The man became inpatient, the other one ignored him like he was another object, something that could be used as a tool.
"Do you have any emotions or are you a rock with legs? I asked a question, and you will answer it."
The wind became heavier and swept more sand up, making uit sometimes difficult to speak out all the words without inhalating sand.

The Handyman was brief. "Want to live? Do it." Grabbing one of the pieces of cloth he had already managed to cut off, Malcolm covered most of his face with it, using the same jaw to hold his unusual headwear together.
Something caught his eye, a gleam, and he grinned: under his dead collegue, he spotted an item he thought he had lost a few days back. With the words 'filthy thief', he ripped his flail off the dead guard, taking a few shreds of clothes and even some blood with it.
Then, he turned towards their employer. It took him a few seconds to search the body, his movements calm and dry as the desert around them, and he produced a piece of salt the size of a full chocolate bar. Invisibly under the fabric, he grinned: they would be payed after all. A second bar appeared.
In that time, Malcolm considered and rejected the one crate of fish that wasn't burried in sand during the attack as too heavy and not worth dragging, but suddenly, his thought came to a halt, as his fingers found something definitely worth this risk: four cigars were hidden in the man's pockets.
Time was crucial. Darting over the ground, bent as lowly as possible to catch as little wind as he could, he darted towards the wagon, ripping fabric off it. The wind tore it from his fingers, and it was hard to get a few decent pieces and roll them up in a somewhat transportable fashion. Next were the ants. Malcolm aimed for the heads: he ripped off the jaws for their sharpness and the antennae for their resilientness.
Malcolm turned arround, barely concerned about what the other guy was doing at the time, and prepared to run for his life, seeking shelter, when he understood he forgot one important thing: the rations.
And the wind was still gaining strength.

The wind was, indeed, getting more powerful with every minute, picking up more sand as it swept through the dunes. Now, one could hear the familiar gusts quite clearly. The visibility was dropping as more and more sand was thrown into the air. The two men would need to find cover quickly.

As a last resort, they would have to lie down and cover themselves with something to protect against the sand. Because of this sand storm, the sun was getting obscured and thus the light level was dropping.

Panic. The only word that described Arf that moment. He ran towards the dark figure that represented the other man. Misguessing the distant he botched against Malharm and the both stumlbed on the ground, stopping right before the package with the rations.

"So that's where you have put them... Well, now is not the best time to eat, I think" Arf faced the ground and spat out enough sand to cover his face with.

"I think we need to hide, and be quick about it. I don't like this storm..." He looked at Malharm and expected a solution; his only hope

The curses Mal muttered under his breath were carried off into the distance by the wind. He raised his bluish hand (the bruise would probably stay until their arrival at the city), and beckoned the big guy.
The wind couldn't blow them over. But that same wind, which carried death, also brought safety from itself: the sand, whipped up by the air, shifted around, and it revealed the remainers of a building: two wrecked walls, and the memory of a third one in the shape of a three-brick high piece of about seven bricks wide.
The fact Mal could see it was mostly due to luck, but not only that. If not for his experience, he wouldn't see the movement of the sand in the distance moving around the structure.
Continuing his beckoning motion, Malcolm ran. He hoped that the storm that had revealed the ruin would not bury it again, with them, so he ran towards it. At least eight hundred meters, against the wind, so the Handyman would have to make quite an effort, but it was that or becoming a dune.