Lockridge's rifle makes a difference in the battle but so does something else. Lockridge is struck and burned while the rifle is melted - an anachronistic arms race.
When Brann of the Rangers sits in the Long House of the conquered village, the holy fire has gone out but a crystalline globe lights the interior. The future invades the past - and that phrase that I have just written reminds this reader of a remark about invasion from the future in Poul Anderson's The People Of The Wind, quoted here.
Lastly, for now, Brann offers his prisoner, Lockridge, a drink:
"'The wine is Bourgogne 2012. That was a wonderful year.'" (p. 64)
The Corridors Of Time was first published in Amazing in 1965 when 2012 was forty-seven years in the future. Now it is thirteen years in the past. Was 2012 a good year for Bourgogne wine? Sf continually engages with the future in ways that change during the lifetimes of its readers.
We always remember that the opening story of Robert Heinlein's Future History is set in 1951.
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