She gestured toward me. Indeed, the garments I wore were different from those of my companions. I shook my head slowly, and tried to digest what I had heard once again. But one bit of it still clamored for rejection.
"About these eliminations," I harked back. "Who decides on which person must die to keep the number down to seven hundred?"
"We do," replied Gederr, almost bleakly.
"And the Newcomers, have they a similar custom?"
"Not they, the greedy interlopers." Gederr looked very greedy himself. "They delve and destroy in Dondromogon, feeding ever new spates of arrivals."
"It seems," I offered, "that you would be well advised to grow in number, and so win this war."
But Gederr shook his head. "We check-mate them at the two poles, where the way into our territory is narrow. And more than seven hundred would be hard to make comfortable."
"Friends, I do not like it," I stated flatly. "There seems to be ruthlessness, and waste."
"Why waste?" spoke up another of the Council, the narrow man, whose name was Stribakar. "This war has begun only recently, but it will last forever. At least, so I see it."