Victoria watched the little speech with barely concealed disgust. To be fair, that was how most people regarded her around here - they liked their little renegade Gods who coddled them and made them into their own tools in the divine struggle for power. These people seemed to miss that for the most part their renegade Gods were no better than the rest. Nearly all of them were liars, tricksters, deceivers. Not as vile as Zeus, perhaps, but there were few who were. She stepped up to a target a short ways down from the other shooters.

The other problem was the bows. Bows were great weapons if you were, say, a Scythian. Maybe if you were hunting buffalo across the plains of precolonial America, or building an Empire from the steppes. There were two crucial problems - they weren't Mongols, and this was the twenty-first century.

Rather than raise a bow she unslung her Mosin-Nagant from her shoulder and raised it to her shoulder, taking a half-second to line herself up and still her breathing, then let loose with a rapid-fire barrage, her hand moving in a blur as she cycled the bolt and pulled the trigger. The British had called it the Mad Minute, and she was the equal of any Tommy - and she had a better rifle to boot. Every five shots she slid a hand to her belt and pulled a stripper clip, slotting into the rifle, and then she was plugging away again. Boom, click, boom, click, boom, click. 

Thirty-six shots. Sixty seconds. Perfect accuracy.

"Bullshit religion and ancient weapons are no match for a good rifle, kids."