The safest thing to do before you start fights is to get some armor and a shield, and then grind a lot, until you are a legendary dodger, shield user, and armor user.
I don't know if this is really obvious or not so I will post how I grind. I usually do this with competent reader human peasant outsiders so it should work for dwarven demigods or whatever you want.
Find a crab, turkey, groundhog, or similar weak creature that you can catch up to. Crabs are slow so you may be able to walk up to them, but it usually involves some sneaking at first. Turkeys are good because as far as I know they don't get exerted. If you can't catch up to anything, throw rocks until you're a legendary thrower / archer (your agility will get higher and make your speed higher), or grind ambusher for a while. Let's say you were able to get yourself adjacent to a crab.
Part one of grinding: set combat preferences to dodge away from enemies, let your dummy hit at you until you are a competent dodger (just push '.', check your skills with 'z'). You will lose a few turns from having to walk back to the crab after you jump away, but that is okay at first.
Part two: grab the crab. Don't do any wrestling moves on it or throw it as far as you can (unless that will be fun, but you will need to get a new crab if you do that). Dodge for a while until you get to be an adequate or competent shield user, or a proficient fighter.
Part three: lie down while you have the crab in your grasp. Somehow this makes shield blocks proportionally more frequent. Night usually falls before you get to legendary dodger, so go sleep somewhere and kill / butcher the crab if you need the food.
Part four: grab a crab, lie down, let the crab hit at you until you're a legendary dodger. Switch combat preferences to block / stand ground. Lie down with a grabbed crab attacking you until you are a legendary shield and armor user. Ta daa. This will stop you from getting hit so much and should also put your speed above 1000 even when fully armored.
Even if you have legendary defense skills, don't charge into a group. You can get a good hit on the person you're charging, but the people next to him can get hits on you "from the side" which is like a backstab you don't get normal dodges against.
If only I would have really thought of that before I fought that horse a while back, even though I knew hooves are lethal as heck...
If you want to kill a horse (or a rhino, or a giraffe...), throw something sharp at it and wait for it to go unconscious from pain, then cut its throat.
I once tried chasing a horse over an icy pond that I knew would thaw out in the morning, hoping to drown it and butcher it. It fell in, but then swam out unscathed.