"Hurry up! They're going to start soon!"

Tori jogged along the path from the barracks to the archery range. Even across the spacious central courtyard of Wendy's Fort, she could see the building crowd of knights. Not there for training of course.

"Hey, you live!" Tori found her friend standing near the back of the crowd.

"It was hard staying awake," Landar smiled serenely and held up a rough metal cylinder, "but I made it. "

The metal with a deep groove down the middle caught the eye first but Tori could see that all the magic was in the small wooden block sticking out the bottom. The design was crude and simple, with a long metal strip the length of a common arrow stuck to the front of a wooden handle. The smaller magical piece of wood hung downwards from the side, fastened in place by a nail in the handle placed parallel to the metal strip.

At Landar's waist was a quiver full of arrows. Large and fat with magic.

"So, you ran off to Michi to show him and he suggested a test here?! What if you kill someone?" Tori asked.

"Haha, very funny," Landar shook her head, "that won't happen. Cato gave me this design, said he saw it from where he came from. "

Huh. Come to think of it where did Cato come from? And where was that guy when this entire thing was his idea!

There was a commotion from the side of the shooting range and the knights began to part. Michi was here.

Landar stood up from her seat. All the eyes at the field quickly went to her and the noise died down. Michi had come to the front now and without any fanfare nodded at her to continue.

Slowly and sleepily, Landar drew an arrow from the quiver and pushed it into the groove. The groove held the arrow loosely and the feathers sank into a clever little depression in the back of the metal strip.

Then she raised the weapon, pointed it at the target and gave a quick flick of her wrist. Tori didn't catch what movement that was but she did see the arrow snap downrange.

It missed the target by almost two widths. That didn't mean much for an unpracticed crude weapon wielded by an alchemist with nary a shooting practice. The fact that she managed to the hit the wall at twenty widths was more surprising. On the first shot too.

More quickly this time, Landar loaded another arrow. Tori paid attention this time and saw her flick the magical wooden block, swinging it around the nail to hit the nock of the arrow. With another crack, another arrow was sent towards the target.

Tori gulped. Twice now it had worked without an issue. Despite the fact that she was getting ready a shield in case the thing exploded, Tori was starting to think that perhaps there was something in this idea after all. Landar the alchemist was firing at almost half the rate of a trained archer!

She hit the target on the sixth shot and beckoned to Tori.

"You want to give it a try?" Landar asked her.

"Er," Tori looked around at all the knights looking at them, then sighed. She didn't really have a choice, did she? "All right. "

After accepting the quiver and the weapon, Tori practiced swinging the block on the nail twice before nodding and signalling Landar to stand back.

With not a small amount of trepidation, Tori placed an arrow inside and fired it in just the way Landar had. Huh. It really was very simple.

She observed her second shot going wild as well. Hm, the arrows seemed to fly to the upper right. Tori wondered if the usual tricks with a bow would work on this weapon. She adjusted her aim and fired a third time.

It hit the target. And her fourth and fifth try as well. Her sixth hit the bullseye and drew gasps from the crowd but Tori was quite sure that was just luck. If this was a bow, she would say that at her current skill the weapon had a spread the size of the target.

The chattering of the knights watching them was getting quite loud now.

"You know," Tori said as she lowered the weapon, "I take it back about your 'special'. It actually works. "

"Of course it does," Landar rolled her eyes.

"Need I remind you of the times when it didn't?"

"Oh you don't have to worry, this one is so simple it couldn't possibly fail," Landar yawned and waved her hand dismissively, "I'm tired, you guys have fun with the gun. Don't kill anyone with it though. "

Right after that, someone pushed through the knights behind them and Cato stumbled out of the crowd. "Hey, I thought you would take more than one night! Did it work?"

The two friends shared a grin. Perhaps he had gotten the news late. "Want to give it a try?" Tori asked.

"An interesting idea, I have to admit," Michi said as he turned the weapon over in his hands, "and even more surprising that you thought of it almost immediately after seeing magic once. I had you pegged for a lucky peasant but it seems your reputation is well-deserved. "

"You praise me too much," Cato shook his head, "Landar helped greatly. In fact, the design is almost completely hers. I still know nothing of magic after all. "

"Still," Michi said while putting it down on the table with a sharp clack, "it's not very useful. What can it do that my battlemage archers cannot? Much less a spellstorm. It's slower and less accurate than a bow. "

Cato wondered what a spellstorm was, but didn't ask. He replied instead, "it takes little training to learn. Point it and shoot it. "

"Still not useful," Michi said, "our archers train for years but we know they are the best they can be. Even if they can learn to shoot one of these in a week, they won't ever use one. And I won't have any use for this for the zombies. "

Cato sighed and nodded. "Alright. "

"So you still have three weeks to get a useful idea. I'm sure you can do that. "

"It was a good idea," Tori said as she escorted Cato to Landar's workshop, "if it helps, some people will find it useful since not everyone is trained with bows. It could be a popular backup among mages and spellstorms who don't have time for martial weapons. "

"It's fine," Cato said. Now was as good a time as any, so Cato dropped his bombshell, "I intend to train the Fukas. Never intended it for Inath soldiers. Even if one of them shoots at half the rate of your archers, every one of them can fire one. "

There was another reason for that, but it depended on some overall properties of magic Cato wasn't sure of yet. The magical arrows implied it, but he needed to know more before he could speculate.

He waved a hand vaguely, "anyway, I need to talk to Landar about refining the design and making more of them. You tried shooting with it, do you have any suggestions?"

"The arrow drifts to the top right. I think it's how the trigger block hits the arrow and how the arrows don't really fit inside the groove. They rattle around. "

Cato nodded. Well, that was only to be expected.

"The groove can be shrunk to fit the arrows and we need a proper trigger, not a block on a nail," Cato mused, "I wonder if a rifled barrel would help. "

Tori laughed, "where do you get your ideas from? I don't even know half of what you're talking about. "

Cato shook his head, he wasn't sure if telling them he was not from this world was a good idea. At least to people who he didn't fully trust yet.

"What about the arrows?" Cato asked, "if every arrow is magical, how will you make enough arrows? If I am feeling this right, the arrows are actually more magical than the gun!"

Tori raised an eyebrow, "we enchant our own arrows in our downtime. We even make our own arrows and repair our own equipment. Landar taught us how to copy her enchantment. "

"Hm, and how many arrows can you make? Do you fall back on unenchanted arrows if you run out?"

Tori laughed, "you must be joking. Unenchanted arrows are so weak. Besides, the problem is that we don't make arrows fast enough. A good battlemage can enchant six to seven arrows a day but it takes us much longer to make good arrows. "

Cato raised an eyebrow, "the Fukas have quite a number of crafters who make arrows all the time for their hunters. Sure, they're all wood, but if you have arrowheads, you can let them make those oversized arrows you use for your bows. "

Tori looked thoughtful and nodded, "I think instead of new ideas, Cato, you might do better as a merchant. "

Cato smiled. She had no idea how much of his ideas were just simply stolen from Earth's history. Specialization was quite unheard of in a medieval world.

They entered the workshop to find Landar sleeping draped over one of her tables. Her black hair coiled possessively around another half-finished gun.

"She must have been tired, staying up all night," Tori said while rooting around for a blanket. She pulled out a slightly dusty one from a box and dusted it off.

She made too much noise though. "Mm?" Landar stirred, "oh. You're here. "

She blinked at them for a few moments, still foggy with sleep. Then she shot out of the chair, brushing down her clothing, "ah, sorry, I was just so tired. Let me get something for you. "

Tori patted her on the shoulder, "it's all right. Let me use your kitchen and I'll get the tea. Cato is here to talk to you about the weapon. "

Landar clearly considered protesting but gave up, "all right. "

Once Tori left to the living areas, Landar sat down again and picked up the half finished gun. "Did Michi like it?" she asked.

Cato shook his head, "no, he said the knights are much better with bows. Tori thinks that it's just a backup weapon for wizards who don't train with bows. "

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"Aw, it was such a nice idea too," Landar pouted, "those knights are never any fun. "

Cato raised an eyebrow, "yeah? I thought you were one of them?"

"Me?" Landar shook her head, "Michi doesn't like me. He thinks my ideas aren't new enough and that I keep trying to do the impossible. "

"Interesting," Cato mused for a while. "What about steel? I have other ideas but some need a stronger metal than iron. I heard that some knights have steel armour, which might be good enough. Toal doesn't know how to make it. "

"No way I can make steel. I know some smiths who are good enough to sometimes make steel but you really need alot of luck or be willing to spoil alot of iron. Or be blessed by the spirits, depending on who you believe," she rolled her eyes.

So much for that hope. "Then I have one last question. Who pays for this fort? Michi said Inath does but who is he?"

"Inath isn't a person, it's the leading country," Landar explained, "with increasing monster attacks, the kings decided to pool their resources for common defense under Inath's leadership. "

"In that case, I have a letter I would like to write," Cato said, "could I ask you to help me deliver it?"

"That depends on who. I'm not well-known enough to write a letter to the Queen, of course. "

Cato nodded, of course he had expected that. Still, the magical glass window was quite the ornamental piece, it was almost certainly a request from someone with some amount of political power since they didn't seem to be rich enough to afford something like this if it took so much of a magical expert's valuable time.

"It's fine, I just need to tell people who have money about trade opportunities with the Fukas," Cato explained, "if you have paper, I can copy out a few letters for you to send to whoever you think would be interested. Plus the magic gun too, I'm not convinced no one will find it useful. "

Landar smiled and went to get him a few sheets of paper, even if she didn't look like she believed it would help.

Cato had also experimented with writing and Tulore had confirmed his letters were Inath language, which held up the guess that something seriously strange happened to him. Unless everyone here happened to speak and write English...

Over the next few days, the Fukas and the soldiers in Wendy's Fort were doing a brisk trade in food. Most of the Fukas came to the fort to visit at least once and gawk at the architecture and talk to the humans. Apart from the occasional disagreements, things went smoothly. The Fukas were starting to clear some of the light forest a day's walk away from the fort and the families were already squabbling over who would get which pieces of land to farm.

Eventually the name of the new weapon was settled. The knights thought it belonged to bows since it fired arrows but Cato wanted to call it a gun. They settled on bowgun for the name.

The overall smoothness of settling the Fukas kept too many questions from being asked, the Fukas went from being a curiousity to foreigners in a scarily short time and even Michi lost interest in what they were primarily trading in, which was only food exchanges and wood for now.

If one could follow the visiting Fukas though, one would have noticed that certain groups carried more food than usual and were discreetly making trades with individual soldiers. An arrow here or a quiver there, it was never anything large enough to be noticed. But the Fukas traded arrows to the knights and they got fewer arrows back, with magic on them. The knights were quite happy that they didn't have to waste effort in making their own arrows and three or four more enchantments in a day was a small price to pay for that.

No one thought to ask why the Fukas wanted magical arrows. Magical arrows were superior. Of course the Fukas wanted them.

Landar herself also ran a brisk trade in bowguns, partially out of curiousity of what Cato was planning and seeing the Fukas use them. She often visited the practice grounds where the Fukas tried to develop hunting and skirmish tactics for the bowguns. The first few bowguns changed rapidly but the design eventually settled on a trigger that swung up through a hole in the stock.

The only other innovation since then was that the magical trigger would eventually run out on magic even if the trigger used extremely tiny amounts. Landar worked with Toal to make the triggers changeable by unhooking them, built a small stock of triggers herself and that was that.

It was almost two days before the zombies would reach Wendy's Fort and Ryulo was out here at the edge of the forest waiting for them and trying to ignore the softly glowing magic strapped into the quiver on his back. Somehow he could see it through the back of his head.

His village had stopped moving and were settling down to build houses and plough land again. This was a good thing. Having the prospect of a warm bed of piyo fur, even if he had to share, was much better than trying to sleep on hard ground.

The bad side was that they now had to stop the zombies instead of just delaying them by poking them until they went to sleep. He was getting very practiced now at leading zombies on merry wild goose chases but that wouldn't defend a village. They had to attack the zombies this time, the human commander of the fort wanted them to play their part in the coming battle and commanded them to attack the zombies in the exact same way Cato had told them to before.

How Cato had managed to convince the village council, and even Tulore, to agree was beyond Ryulo. Ryulo had the distinct feeling that Cato was doing something big he wasn't telling them.

He did get more than ten hunters this time though. Every man and woman who knew how to shoot was here. They had even spent the last three days practicing with this new weapon Cato had the fort's alchemist make, and practicing how to run away from zombies quickly and without panicking. That last part was quite a bit harder than learning Cato's weird bowguns.

So now armed with Inath magical arrows and those arms length bowguns, Ryulo was somehow put in charge of leading the Fukas. True, he had done the best out of every zombie diversion patrol group, but surely he was too young to lead over seventy Fukas!

Ka circling above them gave a hunting cry and Ryulo put away idle thoughts. They were here.

The zombies left the forest in large blocks of a hundred each, arranged in ragged ten by ten squares. That was more organized that Ryulo had seen before but the commander had warned him that the zombies got more dangerous the closer they got to the fort.

There was a black cloud hanging around them too. Was it just his eyes or was that actually there? Ryulo looked again. No, it wasn't. ... Magic?

Magic. The zombies had magic like the Inaths.

He glanced around and picked the block directly in front of him. They were going to hit that one first. Ryulo pulled out his special arrows and fired it at the zombies.

It was supposed to light up with magic once it hit. A clear red flash that should be unmistakable and serve to tell everyone what Ryulo was targeting so they could concentrate their fire.

It didn't light up at all. The arrow crunched into a zombie, which simply staggered a little and kept its position in the block. In fact, the zombies weren't even charging at them unlike those headlong dashes Ryulo was gaining fame for successfully running away from. They simply walked forwards slowly and steadily. Well, that made Ryulo's job ridiculously easy, even a human could outrun them with a brisk walk backwards.

He pointed at the block and shouted, "that one! Kill it first!"

There was some confusion and looking around but eventually everyone was aiming in the right direction.

"Fire!" Ryulo called. There was a clatter of wooden triggers and the zipping noises of a hail of magical arrows slamming into the zombies.

Strange that. His lighted arrow didn't work but the zombies were starting to fall. Whatever that stopped the light clearly couldn't stop the arrows. The magical arrows hit with many times the force than what any hunter could put out and the difference was visible. The zombies fell in two or three hits, sometimes arms and even legs would simply smash apart under the tremendous speed of the arrows. Ryulo made sure to remember that, Cato would want to know even if Ryulo hadn't seen it do any good.

The much-reduced leading block of zombies stalled its slow advance and milled around for a while. Then Ryulo's jaw dropped.

That was totally unfair.

Right before his eyes, the unseen black mist around the zombies were entering the fallen zombies and they simply got up again! Detached limbs that were still somewhat whole would sometimes simply be picked up to be reattached. A few fallen zombies were torn apart by the other zombies and their limbs used as replacements for those still missing.

The horrific sight stunned the Fukas into inaction. Even Ryulo could only watch as the block picked itself up and looked none the worse for the wear except for a few bits of shattered wood sticking out of the bodies.

"Again. "

The zombies fell apart and put themselves back together in another cycle of cannibalization. The black mist was doing something, Ryulo was sure of it. And he thought the mist was getting thinner now. Maybe. This ridiculousness had to have a limit.

He snarled and drew another arrow, "again!"