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Spoiler Alert!
Warning! This page contains spoilers for the Lost Stories. |
The Wolf is a short story from Ranger's Apprentice: The Lost Stories.
Synopsis
Will is tasked with tracking down and killing a lone wolf who has been creating havoc in the local villages.
Summary
The Wolf
The story begins telling how a male wolf's foot is injured and he cannot hunt with his pack anymore. The wolf therefore resorts to thievery and hunting defenseless creatures. One day he sees a young child playing outside a farmhouse and starts to move in for the kill but the child's mother rushes out of the house and drives the wolf away.
Injured
Will is called out to track the wolf which he does so proficiently. He tracks it, along with Tug, to a place in the forest. Will does not realize, however, that the Wolf is nearby and watching him. The wolf, hungry and desperate for food, leaps to take down Tug, and after him, Will. But together, Tug and Will drive off and kill the Wolf, but Tug is injured and cannot walk without limping.
Will takes his injured horse to Old Bob, the Ranger horse trainer, who tries to heal Tug. Will has to leave, and is given a retired Ranger horse to use temporarily which later turns out to be Crowley's old horse who had been retired.
A New Horse
When Will comes back, he finds out that Tug must retire because he limps, and can no longer meet the demands of his former lifestyle. Old Bob had another horse which he had bred specially to look and act exactly like Tug . This the horse that was then given to Will. At first, Will wanted to retire along with Tug, but Tug stopped him by saying that he would never forgive his old master if he did. Will finally relented, letting Tug chose the name Bellerophon for the old Tug's new name (retired Ranger horses must change their names).
When Will mounts the new Tug, he forgets that he needs to speak a paraphrase to the horse and is bucked off, in exactly the same way as he was when he was an apprentice when he first got Tug (now Bellerophon). The new Tug says "You will never learn will you?". While Will is riding the new Tug, he thinks of the race with the Bedullin to win back Bellerophon and to his surprise, the new Tug says "I would have beaten Sandstorm". Will believes that his horses 'spirit' and personality transfer into each new horse he gets.