Troll flesh transplants?

[hroþila]

Old English lic was /lic/~/litʃ/, because /k/ was regularly palatalized in that kind of environment; see also OE ic, ME ich vs Dutch ik, "I"; OE gelic, ME ilich vs Dutch gelijk, "alike". However, there were dialectal variants, and in the northern half of England the /k/ seems to have survived under certain circumstances, so in Middle English there are forms like ik, illik(e), etc. It's hard to say to what extent this represents Northumbrian and Mercian variants already present in early Old English (since the /k/ in these words is an archaism) and to what extent it is Old Norse influence (since these regions, particularly Northumbria, had a significant Anglo-Danish population, and Northumbria was ruled by Norse elites for a while). OE lic shows up both as lich(e) and as lik(e) in ME, so while both pronunciations are fine and true to ME and possibly to certain OE dialects, you'd expect the spelling with <ch> to have /tʃ/, not /k/ (see the modern lychgate, with variants such as lyke-gate).

Modern English doesn't come directly from the West Saxon Old English "standard" that had palatalized /tʃ/ more or less across the board, but from a later London-based Middle English chancery standard that took a lot from more northern variants. Words like like come from those variants, and this is why we have a doublet like -like vs -ly (OE -lic(e), ME -lich(e), -lik(e). See also ditch vs dike, both from OE dic, and beseech vs seek, beseek, from OE secan.