The Fifth Stays Ashore
The argument over Hesk Dunmer's four-passenger limit lasted until the Senate Mar was being untied from Saltwick's jetty. Brask, who knew he would be the poorest sailor aboard and saw little use in becoming a helpless healer over the rail, chose to remain behind. He disliked the decision, but went instead to speak with the survivor of the damaged boat. Kettra, Faro, Yenn, and Ilsevir sailed with Hesk and his two hired hands, Kahl and Burn. The clear morning turned wrong about a mile from shore, when the water began to reflect too little light and Yenn noticed that no birds flew above the open sea. By the time they reached the dead fish, the Senate Mar was shoving through a floating field of cod, haddock, and dogfish that stretched in every direction.
Three Beneath the Hull
The low note began beneath the swell, rising through the Senate Mar's hull without pause or breath. Ilsevir recognized the old warning about the singing rocks just before three enormous black-green eels rose from the channel, each frost-crusted along its back and bearing an iron tag grown into the bone behind its skull. The first struck beneath the stern and pulled Burn overboard before anyone could answer it; he never returned to the surface. Hesk could not turn the boat in the narrow channel, so he drove for the open water beyond the islets while the fight ran alongside and over the deck. Yenn fired from the swaying mast, while Kettra held the port rail with the cinderline blade and her charmed boots keeping her upright on the wet, canted planks. When a second eel came over the rail with a spar, Faro was trapped beneath it and his left arm was broken badly before Kettra and Yenn freed him; amid the confusion, Kahl vanished from the tiller and was lost to the water.
The Eel's Hoard
A third eel surfaced along the starboard side, close enough for Ilsevir to see its tag. He sent lightning into the iron, and the charge ran through the creature until it convulsed and sank; the other two broke away with it. No one could say whether they had died or merely fled, but the Senate Mar crossed out of the Scaries with Hesk's arm broken, Faro unable to fight, and two crewmen gone. The charged eel grounded in a shallow channel at low water, and Hesk brought the damaged boat close enough for Yenn and Kettra to climb onto the rocks with a lantern. Its stomach held the wreckage of lost boats and lost people: a brass fitting, knife, boot, and a small purse, but also a curved tooth blade bound into an old leather-and-wire grip. Ilsevir learned that it cut deeply into great creatures and could make such a beast hesitate, and Kettra took it as the weapon that belonged at the front.
What the Water Answered
The Senate Mar returned to Saltwick by the long route outside the islets, taking four silent hours to reach home at dusk. Hesk went first to Kahl's house and Burn's mother, leaving his own broken arm unattended until Brask met the survivors on the jetty. Brask set Hesk's arm and did what he could for Faro, but the long delay had already made the dragonborn's injuries worse than anyone wanted. Brask had gained one answer while the others were at sea: the damaged boat's survivor said the water had sung when the thing struck his vessel, and that the sound was not directed at him. It had sounded, he believed, like something answering something else from the north. With his arm splinted and two men dead, Hesk nevertheless declared that the Senate Mar would sail for Kaldrek in the morning.