Bamboo fireball throwers

From Glen Cook Wiki

A bamboo tube, hollowed out with a heated metal rod. It has a crank-type firing mechanism. They are loaded with perhaps a dozen or two small, rubbery, colored balls. Turning the handle will send one of the balls shooting out as a fireball (either blue, pink, yellow, green, or violet). The balls are magical and designed to seek out Shadows, but do terrible damage to mortal man and powerful wizards alike. Basically, they're cheap, mass-produced fireball rifles. There are several varieties: cavalry tubes carry fifteen charges; standard infantry and infantry long carry thirty and forty charges respectively. There are longer ones mounted on wagons as well.

Lady designs the weapons and conscripts virtually anyone with a shred of magical talent in the greater Taglios empire into mass-producing the magical balls. Nearly every soldier in the Taglios army ends up with a bamboo weapon. She exhorts them to save the weapons for Shadows, but of course many soldiers use them to shoot any enemy they are facing.

The original design is not that accurate for real-world targets, and has a limited range. After the Company defeats Longshadow, Cletus, Longinus, and Loftus apply their engineering expertise to creating vastly improved models, including a monster cannon twelve feet long with a three-inch bore. This model has an estimated range of 14 miles and is able to burn through fifteen feet of solid stone. Lady works with them to produce a battery of 26 bamboo cannons, which they use to completely obliterate Soulcatcher's hideout ten miles away.