There are two of them, one big and one small - a stallion and a foal. The foal is backed into a corner, the stallion is standing between it and two zombie horses. Blood runs from bites on its chest; its chestnut-and-silver fur is flecked with foam. At the sight of humans coming around the corner it makes another defiant battle-whinny. A human who didn't practice strict discipline to avoid anthropomorphizing animals would likely hear a note of desperate hope in this one. 

Zombies, of course, do not take any notice of defiant challenges. They just keep methodically advancing, taking the occasional thumping hit from the flailing hooves, snapping their rotting teeth and sometimes drawing blood. Two against one, and the two are vastly more able to absorb hits; the living cannot ignore bruises, broken bones, blood drawn. There's only one possible ending.

Unless a paladin gets involved. 

"Charge!"

Yeah two zombie horses are not particularly dangerous to a paladin of Iomedae, armed cap-a-pie and with her blood up.

Good, he won't have to draw on his deep reserves to make a contribution to the fight. He's not sure he has any left. 

"You saved the foal, at any rate," he says to Seelah.

Seelah looks at the still-living horse, and... cannot really disagree with his assessment. She doesn't understand how the animal was still on its feet, much less actively fighting.

"At least it won't be a zombie," she says. That's something. Nowhere near enough, but... not everyone can be saved. They are utterly empty on renewable healing, that's why they're dragging themselves through the streets still limping from bruises; and she cannot ask for their precious scrolls to be expended on a horse. You can buy three horses for what one healing scroll costs. Iomedae is also the goddess of triage.

She is, yes. Or rather, She has had to become so, in this desperate century that should have been the Age of Glory. But... She was a goddess of victory, once. And for a paladin in Her service, fresh off a hard-fought victory against a brimorak, who has just come to the aid of a beleaguered garrison and offered it alliance in good faith... for such a one, it can sometimes happen that the correct triage is to make an investment in future victories.

Oh.

That's unexpected; it had not occurred to Seelah that she could even ask, much less be answered. But - if the goddess thinks it worth while, Seelah cannot well object. She looks inside herself, in the place where her faith meets the goddess's, and finds... a tiny accession of strength; the smallest possible reinforcement. And yet, after all, how many battles have been lost for lack of a horseshoe nail?

Lay On Hands.

"I thought you were out of healing," he says mildly. 

"I thought so too! The goddess - I didn't even pray for this, I swear!"

"I see. That's all right then." If Seelah had misreported the resources available to her, that would have been a serious problem; he's glad there isn't one. He looks at the horse, and smiles a little.

"It's ironic, in a way. I spent twenty years trying to replace all the horses in my armies with -" Taldane doesn't have a word for "trucks" - "with golems. Far more powerful, easier to feed, faster... the army with fewer horses Just Won, in the wars I knew. And now a single horse is a significant addition to my strength."

Seelah smiles back at him. She has no idea what country might have enough golems to replace horses with them, but that's not important. They won't be replacing this one, in any case. 

"This horse would be an asset to any army," she says. "Did you see how it fought? Bleeding from two dozen wounds? As though it were a golem itself, made of iron." She snorts at a sudden thought. "Hah, there's a name! I'll call it - Irony."

"Eeeeeh!"

Abramo can feel a strategic cusp approaching; if his feeling for war translates at all to this tiny scale and these strange weapons, victory in the small skirmishes he's been fighting all over the city has put the defenders' feet under them again, and they can seize the initiative if they can find some suitable attack to make. And, of course, the target is obvious: The Gray Garrison, where the enemy is presumably still pursuing their plan to corrupt the Wardstone, all undisturbed by any tactical setbacks in the streets. And besides, he has run out of other missions. The Wardstone is the punto focale, the place where the campaign will be won or lost; as long as the enemy holds the Gray Garrison, they are winning. But he has reached the point where he can, at any rate, attempt to shake their grasp on victory.

It will be a set-piece engagement, one with an Actual Plan, even if on the level of "Hulrun takes the left, Irabeth the center". He  carefully reconsiders his order of battle, checking whether he should make changes. It is possible that the companions he's been leading in house-to-house skirmishing are not the right ones for a siege assault... but in the end, the raw power of Nenio's and Camellia's "third-circle" spells, and his growing understanding of how to use them, win out over Ember's and Daeran's flexibility. He does not consider replacing Seelah, Woljif, or Lann; he needs the reliability of Smite Evil, Sneak Attack, and rapid-fire cold-iron arrowheads against the multitude of targets that are not worth expending scarce magic on.

He is quite annoyed, then, when he reaches "check boots and equipment, replace missing items" on his checklist and discovers that the hypothesized Outside Market cannot deliver any more Cure Light Wounds potions. There are a sufficiency of Cure Moderate Wounds for immediate tactical use; but the healing-per-gold ratio (*) is better for Light Wounds, and so he likes to use those to recover from battles, when there's no enemy actively fighting. 

Still, that does give him an excuse opportunity to try the potion-brewing kit.

...the ingredients for CLW go for how much?

Right, yes, if the potion can't actually be had for any money then sure, the ingredients are suddenly quite valuable. But Abramo is reasonably convinced that Gemyl has not in fact changed his prices in response to the shortage. He would really like to shake down Rathimus for an explanation of how rainbow quartz, at 56 (fifty-six) the piece, and shiny chitin, at 76 (!) (seventy-six, not factorial), plus a fair amount of highly-skilled labour, combine to make a potion that sells for 50 (fifty) gold pieces. Is there a subsidy somewhere? Some ill-considered state intervention diverting the ingredients away from a high-value use not visible to him, into military applications? 

...there isn't time. When the war is over he will learn how to disassemble a potion into its component parts, and remake his dynastic wealth on the resulting arbitrage; or at least he will shake this parody of an economy into something resembling sanity. But to sit for a few hours and talk markets and money with Rathimus, as much as he'd enjoy it... is just one more casualty of the war.

(*) As measured, obviously, by how many gulps it takes for fighters to report they're back in shape after a battle, averaged over many battles, rather than by, say, checking the definitely non-diegetic popups.

Otolmens wishes to DISCLAIM, on behalf of Her office, any RESPONSIBILITY for the alleged operations of what the mortals call SUPPLY and DEMAND. Otolmens can only concern Herself with the operations of simple (*) DETERMINISTIC systems such as TOPOLOGY applied to MAGICSTUFF; any 'emergent' properties of such systems are OUTSIDE Her REMIT. For bugs in the particular emergent effects called ECONOMICS, Otolmens suggests applying to ABADAR, Whom She understands to occasionally take an INTEREST in such matters.

(*) Otolmens would also like to register (**) for the RECORD that many DETERMINISTIC systems, such as DAMAGE REDUCTION, are not at all SIMPLE and would benefit from a well-considered REDESIGN in the light of EXPERIENCE.

(**) Otolmens, being a GODDESS, has the ability to diegetically insert FOOTNOTES into her speech, yea, even unto the meta (***) level.

(***) But not the meta-meta level. That's reserved for gods who don't, even when they are strictly observing all the Rules, preface the noun with 'demi-'.

Otolmens's suggestion of a redesign will, of course, be given the full attention of Pharasma's sorters and placed in the appropriate bucket, as all things should be. But Pharasma will, without prejudice to the process, venture a guess as to which bucket that will turn out to be.

It's the first time Camellia has been in a major battle, of the sort Abramo calls "set-piece" without explaining what that means; one with planning beforehand and contingencies. It makes her nervous; not afraid, of course, it's actually literally impossible to be afraid with Seelah standing nearby blazing like the banners of Heaven, but... nervous. Seelah's aura of courage makes it possible to think of sharp metal stabbing through one's soft vulnerable entrails without flinching; but it does not do anything about the worry that one might fail to do one's part.

...and she fails.

Just sheer stupid nervousness, really: She sees the dretch and, without thinking about what's around her, starts executing the contingency she agreed with Abramo. If they have any dretches, cast Mass Delay Poison. Trigger, action - and the Abrikandilu that rushed past Seelah, taking the cold-iron blade to the face so it could get in among the second line, sees her casting and casually backhands her. And the spell fizzles in her hands.

To add insult to injury, she's the only one who fails her Fortitude save, and spends the rest of the brief skirmish puking up her guts while the others take down the dretch and its friends.

Serves her right, really; it's her fault. What kind of idiot just casts, reflexively, because she nervously fixated on the contingency "Dretch -> Delay Poison" and doesn't look around her to think about what the enemy might do?

It's Seelah's fault, really; what kind of idiot doesn't manage to stop a demon running right past her to get the casters, when it leaves itself wide open like that?

Abramo's at fault here. What kind of idiot leaves his chemical warfare countermeasures with a single point of failure? It's not as though they're constrained on carrying capacity, they could have stuck six extra potions in the Bag of Holding as a backup, but no, he had to be frugal about it, like a proper merchant of Venice, and conserve his resources for the next step. Without considering that if they fail at the Gray Garrison, there may not be a next step.

...he's not even getting a safe four percent interest on that money.

Okay Woljif is not going to be joining in on the taking-the-blame party, what is he, a paladin? But to be perfectly honest he feels a little bad about whiffing that Sneak Attack on the abrikandilu. 

There isn't time. There will have to be a postmortem, which he hopes will not be literal; but - no plan of battle, and so on. The enemy also has a plan. But - planning is everything, plans are nothing, what matters now is speed and violence. Go, while Irabeth's keeping them busy at the front gate and Hulrun does - whatever he's doing; go now.