Picts for hire

I painted a small unit of Wargames Foundry Picts decades ago. My intention had been to gradually build a Pictish army for Comitatus but it never happened and I realise that I am never likely to build a full Pictish army.

So what to do with them? I am vey pleased with their tartan cloaks and not sure my hand is steady enough now to repeat such brush-work today. I would be loath to part with them. Then it occurred me that I could add a few figures and re-base them for our Dux Britanniarum skirmish campaign set in Caer Colun (modern East Anglia). If so I had to come up with a plausible back story as to why some Picts might be found so far south. So here goes...

It is rumoured that a band Picts have landed their coracles on the shores of Caer Colun. It is not known why they are so far south but it is thought that they may have been serving the King of Bernaccia until he was overthrown by his Angle foederati. They are now looking to take service with the highest bidder.

Led by Gartnait mac Douaill, these are uncouth pagans speaking a nearly incomprehensible language. They are very simply equipped with no armour, their painted bodies wrapped in cloaks of variegated colours. Many are barefoot. What they lack in equipment they make up for with their warlike nature and stubbornness.

Gartnait mac Douaill or Dúngail was King of the Picts in the mid 7^th Century. I appropriated his name for the leader of this fictional band that is now looking to offer their swords (well spears as few of them have swords) to whichever local leader would like to take them on. If there are no takers then reluctantly they will need to raid the villages to sustain themselves.