Damn. So close. At least I’d learned more than Fand would have liked.

“I’m here for my gold,” he rumbles. “You crossed my bridge and never paid. It’s time.” He twitches the tree trunk at me in a not-so-subtle threat.

Greta will never get me to buy a cell phone, but she did show me the Internet and get me signed up on this thing called Twitter, under the name @ArchdruidOwen, so I could learn how people today can socialize while being separated by hundreds or thousands of miles. And she told me about Internet trolls, which are smaller and less dangerous than bog trolls but may smell just as bad. I remember her first rule regarding them, which was actually me own rule two thousand years ago, and smile up at my uninvited guest.

“Sorry, lad, but I never feed the trolls.” And then I haul off and punch him hard, directly in the dong.

Troll skin is naturally tough and makes wearing armor unnecessary, and troll skin foreskin is no different. But me new brass knuckles could shatter rock, so I wasn’t quite sure what would happen when I made contact. In hindsight, I should have pulled me punch a bit, but I’m so mad that he’s there threatening me new Grove and that Fand’s escaped that I just go for it, which means I’m abruptly in a new kind of nightmare when me fist punctures the skin and keeps going.

I’m up to me elbow in spongy troll cock, and we’re both profoundly unhappy about it and yelling fit to beat a ban sidhe. He crumples inward by reflex, grabs with his massive left hand, and yanks me out of there and tosses me through the air a good thirty yards or so. I land on the exposed face of a half-buried boulder and it crunches me left shoulder blade, shooting pain through the whole arm before it goes numb and useless. I roll onto me right side in the bunch grass and lever my body up, staggering to me feet as the troll realizes he’s not going to die but just be permanently disfigured in his dank and smelly junk. He gets powerful angry about it and forgets all about getting his gold out of me. All he wants now is to stomp me to a smear in the mud. Or bash me on the head with that tree of his. He picks the latter option, bellowing and charging with the tree, though due to his injury he’s kind of lurching more than running.

The day I passively wait for a charge to arrive is the day you can dip me in a lake of salted whale shite. Speaking quickly, I throw off me robe and shape-shift to a ram. I charge him right back, lame left front leg and all—I’m still faster than he is by a far stretch. He’s a right-handed lad, so he’ll be planting his left foot to take his swing. That’s the leg I aim for as I lower me head, horns covered in the brass. He tries to adjust and take me out with his aspen trunk but whiffs over me head as I get inside his guard. I plow into his left shin and don’t completely take off his leg but it’s a near thing. The bones audibly fracture in a few places, and I stumble sideways, rocked by the collision. He goes down loud and heavy and won’t be charging me again: The bones have erupted through the back of his leg and stick up like spires.

Thing is that there’s no easy way to finish him off—and I will be finishing him off out of necessity. You can’t put your fist through a man’s wood and expect him to forgive and forget. He had gone too far in coming after me, and I had gone too far in my response. It’s a death match now, and it’s not going to be easy for either of us to survive.

Climb up on his back and he can roll over and crush me. Try to get to any of his organs, and his perfectly functioning arms and hands can get to me first. He’s already looking for me and, damn it, while I’m looking at his face he kicks out blindly with his right foot, a trick move where he’s bending it over his left while lying facedown, and it knocks me over and I land on that lame left shoulder. Bone grinds against bone and I bleat, which is a fecking awful noise. The ram form isn’t useful anymore, so I shape-shift to a bear as he rolls over to his back, pivots on his hips, and raises that log of a leg in an attempt to heel-kick me into paste. Me left arm still isn’t working of course, but I’m counting on the right one to win this. I dart in a bit closer, raise up on my back feet, and meet that troll’s leg with my claws, gouging deep grooves across the tendons at the back of his ankle and effectively halting his descent. After the reflexive recoil, he brings it down again, pain be damned, and I’m still there. I’m clubbed to the ground by the back of his calf and see spots in me vision, but I just keep lashing out with me claws until the pressure disappears and he’s rolled away to escape me. I struggle up and am unsteady on me paws, forget I’m injured, and try to put weight on my left front foot, which crashes me to the ground again. When I manage to lift myself off the ground once more, I see through blurred vision that the troll is grabbing for that tree trunk with giant fingers. He’s also spinning around somehow in the sky, but I know that can’t be really happening—he’s clocked me upside the head right well. Might as well be dead already, because I don’t have the wits left to dodge another blow, even if I can accurately judge where it’s coming from in time. Three of those trees rise up in the air and hang there for an impossible time, frozen like I was on that island for all those years, and then they begin to fall in different directions. I hear them—or it—crash back to earth but am not rightly sure where it lands except that it’s not on top of me. Me vision won’t focus and I blink furiously, trying to locate the troll, and when I finally find him he’s not moving. He’s underneath the tree, and I think that’s mighty strange. Then I see the stained grass and earth around us and realize that he bled to death. My claws must have opened a few arteries, and, combined with his broken leg and that other thing I did, he ran out of juice pretty fast.

I shape-shift back to human and lie on my right side so all me tattoos can soak up energy and help me heal. Moving that much makes everything spin again, and I’m sick on the grass. Greta’s face appears in front of mine soon after that, and all I can think is that I probably still have vomit in me beard.

“Owen? Owen! The kids said this thing is a troll.”

“Are they safe?”

“The kids? Yes. You don’t look so good. Your arm’s out of its socket.”

“It is? Well, it’s worse than that on the inside.”

“Owen, your eyes aren’t tracking me. Can you see me?”

“Aye, all four—no, five of you.”

“You’re concussed.”

That’s a new word for me and I tell her so. “I don’t know what that means. Hope it means I’m handsome.”

“Of course you are. But tell me, are you healing right now?”

“Aye. Trying to.”

“Focus your efforts on your brain. It’s probably swelling. And don’t go to sleep.”

“Funny ye should say that, because I’m quite sleepy.”

“No, no, don’t sleep. Talk to me. Why is there a troll here?”

“I owed him money. He didn’t want Canadian money, though. Showed him the queen and the king of Canada and everything, but he wouldn’t take it.”

“What? You’re not making sense.”

“It’s because of Fand. She escaped. She’s free. We have to find her.”

“Which one is Fand again?”

“The one who wants to kill us all because we aren’t living in the past.”