Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson by Greg Bear, Gardner Dozois

realize that was what they were doing. They wanted every cut and thrust of Holger’s adventures in this world, in the one where he’d spent some years, and in the others he’d passed through on his long, roundabout journey back here. To help loosen his tongue, they broached a barrel of beer Alianora hadn’t planned on opening so soon.
    Holger was a good talespinner, of the kind who could laugh at himself and his blunders: one more thing Alianora recalled from bygone days. She’d lived through some of his stories, and heard others before—how they came back! Others still were new to her. The feathered demons—or were they pagan gods?—who ate hearts and drank blood made her shiver in spite of herself.
    Theodo had come back in with an armload of wood. Alianora scarcely noticed. Her husband got caught up in Holger’s latest tale, too. When the knight paused to wet his whistle, Theodo asked, “This is truth, not just a yarn spun for the sake of yarning?”
    “Truth.” Holger signed himself to show he meant it. “Oh, sometimes neatened up a bit for the sake of the story, and maybe the way I remember it now isn’t exactly the way it happened then, but . . . close enough for government work, they say in the other world where I lived a long time.”
    The phrase sounded odd to Alianora, but Theodo grasped it at once. “That is truth,” he agreed gravely. “As near as a mortal man’s likely to come to it, any road.” He took up the beechwood dipper and poured himself a stoup of beer.
    Holger refilled his own mug, not for the first time. He sipped appreciatively. “Mighty fine stuff,” he said.
    “I have a charm against souring I got years ago in the Middle World,” Alianora said. “It works as well on this side of the border, so there must be no harm in it.”
    “Not unless you’re the wrong kind of microorganism .” That last must have been a word from some other world, for it meant nothing to Alianora—nor, plainly, to her kinsmen. Holger took another pull at the beer. “I saw a tavern near the well,” he said. “If you can brew like this, I’m surprised you don’t run it out of business.”
    “We would never do that!” Theodo sounded shocked. “Gerold needs must make his living, too.”
    “Besides, brewing a barrel of beer now and again is one thing. Brewing enough for a thirsty village, that’s summat else altogether,” Alianora added.
    “Mm, I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right,” Holger said after a little thought. “You always did have a good head on your shoulders, and not just for looks.”
    Alianora’s cheeks heated. Theodo scowled. Then Einhard, not noticing anything amiss, said, “Sir Holger, will you speak more of these . . . Nasties, did you call ’em?”
    “Nazis,” Holger corrected. His face went hard. “Though Nasties is a good name for them, too. Some ways, I think they were worse than any of the evils that haunt this world, because the only devils that drove them boiled up from the bottom of their own shriveled souls.”
    He told some of what they had done. Only two things made Alianora believe him: that his voice held unmistakable conviction, and that no one could or would invent such horrors for the sake of making talk spin along. It was as if, for a time, a shadow hovered under the roof thatching.
    Alianora got the fire on the hearth built up the way she wanted. She hung the cauldron of porridge above it. Then she said, “Shall we get out into the open air a while, to let it cook?” That made a fair enough reason, but she also wanted to escape the shadow that—she hoped—wasn’t really there. She knew she would never eye a fylfot the same way after this.
    “It is a trifle smoky in here,” Holger said. Theodo laughed under his breath. Einhard and Nithard both smiled. With the forge always blazing in the smithy, they knew more of smoke than Holger would . . . or did they?
    “What became of your pipe, wherein you burned the nickels’ smoking-leaf?” Alianora