“How are they different?”
“Eh. Kind of like the difference between a private and a public road. Only Druids can use tethered trees freely, because we’re bound to Gaia. Lesser Fae can use some of them but have trouble bringing other people along. Old Ways, though, built by the Tuatha Dé Danann, are like your highways. Anyone can travel them, no magical ability required except maybe having some way to see the path. That’s what I think we’re looking for. Trolls can’t use the tethers to Tír na nÓg unless a Druid shifts with them. Good thing too. Last thing we need are trolls swinging their cocks all around the world.”
“Well, you can’t follow a scent trail the way you are, and if you shape-shift you’re liable to mess up your shoulder even worse, aren’t you? So that means I should probably play the bloodhound.” She sheds her jacket and drops it to the forest floor.
“What? No, ye don’t have to go through that. I’ll shape-shift and it’ll be fine. I’ll walk on three legs, keep healing and everything.”
Greta spins in a circle, scanning the area. “It’s no trouble, Owen. Look, we’re already deep enough into the trees that no one from the house will see anything.” Her hands cross over her stomach, grab the bottom of her shirt, and pull it over her head in a fluid motion.
“I don’t give a loud juicy shite if anyone sees ye.” I begin to unbutton my shirt as fast as I can with one hand. “I don’t want ye to have to go through the pain of the shift when ye don’t have to.”
“That’s sweet, Owen,” she says, tossing her shirt to the ground on top of her jacket and reaching for the fly of her jeans, “but I stopped fearing the pain a long time ago. It can’t be avoided, so I just accept it as part of my day.”
“But this can be avoided, Greta. I told ye I’d do it—”
“No. Shh!” She puts a finger to her lips and then points uphill, her eyes focused on something over me left shoulder. I turn and see a blue-skinned troll stepping from behind a pine onto the hill. He hasn’t seen us yet; he’s motioning to someone unseen, who becomes seen shortly thereafter: another troll, this one with brown leathery skin, stepping from behind a tree that’s not wide enough to hide their bulk. It’s the anchored end point of an Old Way. They’re coming through from one of the Irish planes.
I start tearing at my clothes now. “Fecking stew me bollocks in the queen’s own cup o’ tea, the bastard had friends! I’ll keep ’em busy while you’re making the change,” I say, since her shift takes much longer than mine. Two more trolls step through. “And if you can call anyone else to help through your pack link, we could probably use it.”
She nods and continues undressing. As soon as I’m free of me clothes, I shift to a bear and charge up the knuckles. Greta’s bones start to slide and pop, and that draws the trolls’ attention. There are six of them bunched together now, and I roar as I head uphill to face them in an awkward three-legged lope. Two of them have actual weapons, and the other four scurry about to find some—which means they pull up trees. One wraps his arms around the tree anchoring the Old Way, and another slaps him in the back of the head before he can uproot it. “No, not that one! We need it!”
“Urgh. Too big anyway,” he says, and by that time I am closing fast on the first blue troll. Unlike the bog troll from yesterday, he has his package securely wrapped, bless him, but has instead decided to adorn himself with the skulls of his smaller victims and the teeth of larger ones. These are strung on ropes about his neck, and so he makes hollow clacking noises when he moves. All about showing off, this one. Has a fancy club that looks carved instead of simply pulled out of the earth. I watch him hold it over his shoulder, wait for the swing, and then, when it comes around to clock me, I rear up and meet it with me brass-coated claws. They punch through the wood and shatter it into splinters, leaving the troll with a handful of toothpicks but no injuries. The leather-brown troll steps in and aims a kick at me from the left side, and of course he tags me in the lame shoulder and sends me tumbling across the hill in a new explosion of pain that pierces right through me nerve blocks and tears apart all the work I’d done to bind it together. Damn but trolls are unfairly strong. I can almost hear Dr. Sudarga saying, “I told you we should have immobilized it.”
It would be smarter to fight in camouflage now, but Greta’s not finished shifting yet. She’s yelping and howling through the change, and a few of the trolls are wondering what that’s all about—if they were released from Time Islands, like me, they wouldn’t know anything about werewolves. They might be thinking she’s a wounded animal right now—which I suppose she is—instead of an imminent threat. I don’t want them paying too much attention to her, so I have to remain both visible and annoying. I lumber up on me three legs, charge back toward the blue lad, and, with an assist from Gaia, leap up far higher than should be possible—a trick that finally gets Greta to stop calling me Teddy Bear and calling me Air Bear instead. Blue Bones can’t get out from underneath, and he throws up a forearm to block me attack. The brass claws shear right through his arm, rake down his chest, rip apart his skull necklaces, and then dig into his guts, pulling some of them out. He worries about putting them back in with his remaining hand after that, and I don’t have to worry about him. I have five other trolls to worry about, because I have secured their undivided attention. Leather Lad has a real club; the other four have saplings. The guys with actual trees have to slam overhead if they want to hit me; they can’t swing in an arc to catch me, because other trees get in the way. I can dodge them. It’s Leather Lad I have to watch for. He’s got a club with spikes on it, and if he connects I’ll have to go to that fecking hospital again.
He moves forward, growling, and I hobble in reverse, growling back. He lunges and swings the club in a long, sweeping arc, and I have to leap away and fall on me right side to dodge it, though it still clips me with one of the spikes and leaves a deep scratch. Bears are strong but not terribly agile on the ground, so I’m vulnerable. He steps forward with a “Raahh!” to take advantage, cocking his arm back for another swing, and the lads behind him are grinning and cheering him on, anticipating the kill.
We’re all surprised, but none more than Leather Lad, when Greta leaps at his unguarded neck and her teeth sink in, taking him to the ground. When he hits the ground, her momentum carries her a bit beyond, but she never lets go of that throat, so she tears it out and takes it with her. She shakes the flesh a couple of times from side to side and then flings it away, showing lots of bloody teeth to the other trolls and barking an angry challenge at them.
“That’s not a normal wolf,” one of them observes. Quite the scholar for a troll. “Not a normal bear either. Animals shouldn’t be able to do that to us.”
Ah, he’s referring to the natural armor of troll skin. Well, werewolves shrug off magic, especially low-level stuff like armored hide, and Creidhne’s brass knuckles represent far stronger magic than theirs.
Four against two now. They’re wary, strong, and slow. It occurs to me that I’m also strong and slow as I struggle to me feet. Greta, though, is faster than a bowel movement after eating a pound of dried figs. She’s also much faster than a troll can think.