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In my homebrew world that I have been running for a couple months now I have run to a small problem that I need advice on how to stop.

The party, unknown to them, killed off a major part of the story I was constructing. Basically in some instances my party has out smarted me. They came across an old run down fort that a group of orcs was using as a staging ground. The group saw a horse tied up outside of the main gates. The cleric would not let them outright kill the horse. So the thief, who was a halfling, got under the horse and unbuckled the saddle before they went inside.

After a clearing out the inner workings of the fort and chasing the "boss" outisde as he was fleeing. He fell off the horse and was knocked out. The party then killed him off. He was a level 6 half orc warrior, the party was at the time level 1, almost level 2.

So I reworte a few things in my story, it is an odd complicated story. Basically a lich is tricking the orcs into going to war with the elves. The lich just wants a select few elves dead as they were the ones that killed him when he was alive. But over time he has grown to hate all elves. That is the short version.

Anyways, I decided to show a little more of my hand, and had a Death Knight attack a cleric that the party was guarding on his way back to the capital city. The party ignored the skeletons and undead troll the Death Knight had with him, and went right at the knight. Thankfully none of them hit him so he basically ignored them as he pushed forward towards the cleric.

So what would be a good way to discourage these player from attacking people and things they has no business in doing so without out right telling them, you can't kill him, you should run in terror ... or at most try and talk to him.

The story is about the PCs, and how they stumbled onto a scheme by a Orc King to wipe out all Elves.

I did rewrite things, actually made the story better.  That really isn't my problem.

It is how to get the PCs to know their limits to certain degree, with out making it feel like I am handcuffing them. I just don't want the PCs to go dragon hunting, get killed and blame me for it.

I have a few random dungeon crawls set up to get the PCs some levels to make some up coming fights seem more epic.
..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />Had thought about the idea of bringing the Orc back to life, but that seems kinda hookey.

Not sure I have a real solution to this problem.

Next time they pick a fight with something they shouldn't just make sure the stats prevent them from killing it outright.  Obviously you can't go back now, but if you are rolling behind a screen, then there was no reason they should have been able to kill or even knockout your orc.  He falls off the horse, sure.  Maybe he even cracks his skull, but in the end you could always tell them he picked himself up, cursed the players and climbed aboard one of his henchman's horses... Or retreated behind a wall minions that prevent the players from gettnig right to him.  I used to spend hours working up a NPC baddie only to have players call a critical shot to the eye and kill them in the first round.  Damn, I would think, there's a lot of work down the tube.   Now that same baddie would laugh and pop out his glass eye, or fall down a crevasse only to return later to harass them again.  Flying creatures and NPCs have an easy solution to escape, and magic spells or items can always be used to turn someone invisible long enough to escape or even teleport away. 

Many times if you place something into the story as an obstacle by default many pcs will assume that creature is there to be overcome and that the dm wouldn't put an unwinnable situation in their path.

Is that realistic?  No.  Realism has to be balanced against the fun of the game. If pcs assume everything is tougher than them they don't feel all that heroic or powerful which isn't terribly rewarding

A display of power at a distance against opponents they know to be more powerful than themselves may help.  They know they have to be more cautious but it provides a goal for them to aspire to.