Best guards when horror marked?

[Hellboy]

This has been an interesting thread, but most of the comments above seem oriented towards a pretender w/ the likelihood of high level horror attacks. I'm also wondering about low level horror attacks. For example, if you're fairly sure you've got a low level horror mark (say your mage was using a lightless lantern, and he stopped using it after the first turn a horror mark showed up).

To be more specific, if you have a useful, but expendable mage with a probable low level horror mark, is there any point in guarding with 5 heavy infantry? If not, is there a not so very expensive way for a non-astral mage to protect himself?