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man-with-der-girly-hands-who-buys-strangers-drinks?"
    The spare girly hand twitched aside the edge of the hood, flashing a bright glare from a set of perfect teeth and a face so plastic it might easily have melted in the heat.
    "Name's Gumption," he said, grinning blindingly. "Marteh Gumption. Chap who invited you. Terribly sorry for all this, ahaha, cloak and dagger nonsense. It's so blasted tedious being famous." The man sighed with the air of one who had decided his life was quite the most miserable in existence.
    Wulf's eyes, the newcomer couldn't help noticing, had narrowed.
    "Um..." Gumption said, coughing politely. "I-I wonder whether I might... ow... I might have my, ahah, hand back... It's just that you have quite a strong grip and-"
    "Why do you not tell me," said Wulf, all trace of a slur miraculously gone, "about these... How did you call them? 'Horrific and savage' peoples?"
    "Ah..."
    Something popped lightly in the man's hand.
    "Aaah... ahah... You s-saw my speech, then? Good, ow, good. Y-yes, you see I'm plan-"
    "Also, why do you not be telling me about how der Atlantis was lost? I am very very interested in that."
    "Yes, well... you see, what I'm planning is-"
    "You mind if I am asking you der question, mister history man?"
    "Ow God no, ahah, ask away... Just do give me back that hand, eh, there's a g-"
    "What sort of der helmet were der Vikings being wearing?"
    "W-what? Ow, ow, ow--" The hand crackled like bubblewrap.
    "Helmets. What did they look like?"
    "W-well, ahaha, as any fool knows, they w-were round..."
    "Yes..."
    "A-and hard..."
    "Good so far."
    "And they had an enormous pair of horns sticking up from their oh sweet sneck my hand god no aaaaaaaa-"
    Wulf let go, raising his tankard in a contemptuous glug, ignoring the whimpers from across the table.
    "You," he said, synthetic mead dribbling from his whiskers, "are not being der real historian."
    At which point Marteh Gumption, lip wobbling like cellulite in an earthquake, burst into tears.
     
    The reason that Wulf knew that Gumption was a fraud was ridiculously simple: helmets with horns poking from either side are a really, really bad idea. Simple adjustments can cause serious damage, an innocent sneeze can turn the unfastened helmet into a deadly missile, doorways become impassable and, quite apart from anything else, they look completely and utterly stupid.
    Vikings did not wear horned helmets.
    In actual fact, despite their impracticality and historical inaccuracy, Wulf's tribe had for a short time been in possession of not only a selection of spiky headguards but, even worse, a range of iron helmets with stupid little metal wings poking above the ears.
    In Wulf's defence the period in question had coincided with a serious temporal incursion into the ninth century by a gang of mutant criminals hellbent upon screwing with history and a few spontaneously generating helmets had been the last of his worries. Tanks, helicopters, goblins - all manner of bizarre and inexplicable items had popped into existence, most of them being ludicrously rationalised as evidence of the gods' anger. The strangest apparition of all - a brightly painted demon with glowing eyes and a firestick at its hip - had turned out to be a Mister John Alpha Esq, which just went to show that not everything in ninth century life could be easily explained as a product of "magic".
    It was during the episode with the weird-eyed-demon, the helicopters and, yes, the pointy-snecking-helmets, that Wulf was accidentally transported fourteen hundred years forwards in time. As you do.
    Since then he'd learned that vehicular engineering was based upon solid mechanical principles, that freakish demons were called "mutants", that firesticks were called "guns", and that no self respecting Viking would be seen dead in a horny helmet unless the laws of time and space were so snecked that he had no idea what he was doing.
    To put it another way, the subject of helmets with horns had always been