Annoying, isn't it?

The first dwarf you run across will throw an axe at you and miss. Pick the axe up and keep it with you. You're going to need it.

If you see a dwarf from then on out, throw the axe at him. Don't forget to pick it up immediately afterwards in case another comes back. You can't just ignore the dwarf. It'll just keep trying to kill you, and possibly be joined by reinforcements.

The dwarves are pretty annoying during the first part of the game, but there are a total of seven dwarves in the cave (seven... dwarves... get it?), so once you deal with those seven, you're done with them... well, until the end of the game, anyway.

Sometimes you will start up a saved game, and keep running into a dwarf right away that kills you, time after time after time. In this case, go a different direction, if you can, and try to vary your route, just to give the random number generator a chance to come up with something different.